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BAD ENGLISH EXPOSED. 



BAD ENGLISH EXPOSED. 



Extracts from Reviews. 

* This work is well worthy of the careful study of all who 
aspire to write English elegantly and accurately. ' — The London 
Quarterly Review. 

' The English language is a noble inheritance ; and we may 
well be thankful to those who, like Mr. Moon, jealously guard 
its purity. There are, indeed, but few either readers or writers of 
the English language who do not need to profit by his very in- 
structive criticisms.' — The Quarterly Journal of Education. 

1 There is something very inviting in the work of a man who, 
having fairly unhorsed the Dean of Canterbury in his own chosen 
lists, has now the audacity to attack the great arbiter of such 
contests, Lindley Murray himself. We confess our obligation to 
Mr. Moon, not only for an instructive but for an entertaining 
book ; and we believe that there are few who do not often fall 
into errors which he condemns, or who cannot learn from him, 
in a very pleasant way, to write and to speak English more 
elegantly.' — The New York Church Record. 

' We welcome as a benefactor every man who sets himself 
conscientiously to prune out of our language those unsightly 
excrescences of style, violations of syntax, and inaccuracies of 
expression, which disfigure so much of the literature of the day. 
This is the task which Mr. Washington Moon has imposed upon 
himself, and we wish him well accordingly. It would be unjust 
to him not to acknowledge that his two little books, "The 
Dean's English" and "Bad English Exposed", are a useful 
contribution to the art of writing the English language with 
accuracy. ' — The Times. 

* The name of Mr. Washington Moon is well known in this 
country and in America as an able writer and critic on the 
English language ; and we are constrained to look upon his con- 
tributions to a more correct criticism and a fuller knowledge of 
the English language as the most valuable additions to this part 
of our literature which we have seen for very many years. Mr. 
Moon has brought to his difficult task rare powers of analysis 
and discrimination, and a highly cultivated appreciation of all 
that is most beautiful, vigorous, and correct in our language ; 
and it is almost impossible for any sound English scholar to read 
Mr. Moon's "Dean's English" and "Bad English Exposed" 
without learning very much from their pages. Why does not 
Mr. Moon write a grammar of the English language — a task for 
which he clearly is eminently qualified?' — The School-Board 
Chronicle. 



BAD 
ENGLISH EXPOSED: 

A SEEIES OF CRITICISMS 
ON THE ERRORS AND INCONSISTENCIES OF 

gkblcB Itmrao antr aityx (grammarians. 

BY ^ 

G. WASHINGTON MOON, 

MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL * » 
OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE, 
AUTHOR OF 
11 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH ", ETC. 



&tmxt\ ibitimr. 



The rules of our language should breathe the same spirit as the laws 
of our country. They should be bars against licentiousness, without 
being checks to liberty "-Campbell's 'Philosophy of Rhetoric: 



LONDON: 

HATCHAEDS, PICCADILLY. 

1871. 



Mfe2> 
• ' i?7' 



PREFACE. 



My former work, "The Dean's English' 1 ', to which 
this is the companion volume, is a series of criti- 
cisms on the language employed by the Dean of 
Canterbury in his treatise on the Queen's English ; 
and demonstrates that while the Dean undertook 
to instruct others he was himself but a castaway 
in matters of grammar. 

The present work is a similar series of criti- 
cisms, but is on the English of certain Americans ; 
namely, Lindley Murray, the Hon. Gr. P. Marsh, 
Mr. S. of Trinity College, and Mr. E. S. Gould 
of New York. 



vi PREFACE. 

Lindley Murray was born at Swatara in Penn- 
sylvania. He studied law and practised at the 
bar until the breaking out of the war of indepen- 
dence, when he became a merchant, and soon 
amassed a handsome fortune which enabled him 
to retire. The remaining years of his life were 
spent in England; here he wrote his celebrated 
"English Grammar", and other works, and died 
in February, 1826. 

The Hon. Gr. P. Marsh is a native of Vermont, 
TJ. S. A. After occupying several important 
offices in that State, he became a member of 
the Federal Congress, subsequently United States' 
Minister at Constantinople, and is now United 
States' Minister at Florence. But his real dis- 
tinction is as a scholar ; and especially as a 
linguist. He is a rival of Bowring as a polyglot, 
and has attained deserved eminence as a master 
both of Northern and of Oriental languages. 



PREFACE. vii 

Mr. S., who defends certain of Mr. Marsh's 
expressions, is one of the professors in Trinity 
College, Hartford. 

Mr. E. S. Grould is a son of the late Hon. 
Judge Grould of Connecticut, who was one of the 
most eminent jurists, graceful speakers, and 
accomplished scholars in the United States. 
Judge Grould was also especially distinguished 
for purity and precision as a writer of English. 
Mr. E. S. Gould has therefore a sort of heredi- 
tary claim to rank as a purist in English style ; 
and he has long been recognised in America 
as an authority in matters of literary and 
philological criticism. 



12 College Terrace, 
Belsize Park, 

London, N.W. 



CONTENTS. 



ECTIVES. 




TAGE 


" Either " 


. 33 


"•Whether" 




. 33 


"One half" 




. 95 


"All" and "every " 




. 100 


"Every first" 




. 100 


" Completest " 




, 103 


"So universal" 




103, 177 


" More perfect " 




. 103 


" Less " and "fewer " 




106, 141 


"Alone", "aloner", "alonest" 




. 112 


"So supreme" 




. 105 


"More decisive" . 




133, 163 


"Such" 




134, 143 


" Other than", and "other besides" 




. 216 


" More closely than usual " 




. 220 


" Connected no closer " 




. 222 


EEBS. 

"Too" . 


. 5,6 


"Only" . 


11, 131, 132, 160, 207 


"Properly" 


. 12 


"Also" . 


. 


13, 131 



CONTENTS. 



"Rather" 
"Even" . 
" Therefore " 

" So totally ", " supremely ' 
" versally " 



PAGE 

.13 

. 13 

. 94 

" absolutely ", " mwi- 

. 14, 15, 103, 133, 163 



Neuter verbs, not to be qualified by adverbs 

" This construction sounds rather harshly " 

" The dog smells disagreeably " 

" It sounds very strangely " 

" The above heading " 

" The "-wp- train", and " down -train 

"As far as", and ".so far as" 

" Severally united " 

" The passage is read wrong " 

"So" . 

" Herein-above " . 



. 16 
. 16 

. 18 

187, 199 

. 53 

. 53 

94, 105, 136 

. 132 

133, 188 

134, 135, 176 

. 135 



ARTICLES. 



Improper omiss-ion of the definite article . 

Use of articles in connection with "both " and "and 

" An discourse " . 

" A embarrassed manner " 

" A injurious nature" 

Repetition of article, necessary 

" Few ", and " a few " 

"A historian'*, or "an historian'' 

Aspiration of the letter H 

Omission of article after "or" 

"English", or "the English " 

"A" and "an", when used . . 56, 

"A many", and "many a" 

"Little", and "a little" 

Different meanings of " a " 

"A most " 

"An H", or'^H" 



10 
39 
29 
29 

29 
30 

34, 87 
56 
56 
63 
68 

83, 96 
86 
87 
88 
90 
91 



CONTENTS. 



CONJUNCTIONS. 



" That " 




3,35,217 


"And" . 


34, 35, 94, 130 


"As" . 


36, 136 


"Both" . 




. 37 


"0/-" . 




. 58 


"If, however, nevertheless" 




. 208 


MISCELLANEOUS. 




Virtuous indignation manifested by a horse 


's legs . 107 


Flemish painters' "interiors" 


. 107 


Mixed metaphors 




. 138 


"And all" 




. 139 


"Purified by an endorsement" 




140, 164 


"Sprinkled with violations" 




. 140 


Comparisons 




. 149 


a Superficial reading" 




. 154 


"A first edition" 




. 154 


"A microscopic investigation" 




. 190 


A portrait of an old woman 




. 191 


"If the game is worth the candle " 




. 191 


Neglect of the study of English 




. 197 


"A complete list of errors " 




. 223 


NOUNS. 


" The second and third person " . . .31 


"In the Old and in the New Testaments" . . 32 


Possessive case of nouns . . 167,191,192,222 

T"»T"> T^TTk /~\ C1TT"!T/"V "VTl 


PRE POSITIONS. 

Prepositions in connection with "and" . . 39 


The use of "o/" for " by " 


. 40 


„ „ "to" for "over" 




. 40 


„ "of" for "in n 




40, 70, 213 


„ „ "in" for "with" 




. 41 


„ "of" for "to" 




. 41 


„ „ "on" for "of" 




. 41 


,, ,, "with" for "by " 




41, 96 



CONTENTS. 





PAGE 


The use of 'in" for "with" 


41 


„ „ "of" for "for" 


42 


The omission of "from " . 


43 


The omission of " to" 


67 


" The signature of a great name " 


70 


Various meanings of "with " 


96 


1 ' The using it ", or i l the using of it " 


114 


The omission of "of" 


126 


"Differ with ", and " differ from " . . 148, 185 


"Agree with ", and "agree to" 


151 


"Part with", and" part from" 


152 


NOUNS. 
"Each of them should content themselves " 


19, 20 


The "and which" error . 


20 


The "in which" error . . . 42, 189 


Repetition of relative pronouns 


23 


"Which" and "that" .... 


24 


"This" 


25 


"My banks they are furnished with bees" . 


26 


" Where ", for " upon which " 


27 


" Whose ", applied to things 


79 


"Them" . . . 


145 


"Those" .... 


210 



PUNCTUATION. 

Importance of a comma . . . 62, 107 

SENTENCES. 

Badly constructed sentences 

43, 46, 56, 66, 75, 145, 162, 184, 189, 190 
Twenty-three words too many in one sentence . 45 

" Them's them " . 



SLANG. 

" Something musty " 

" Smacks " 

" Come to grief" 



75 

159 
159 

160 



CONTENTS. 



Xlll 



PAGE 

"Prig" . . . . .183 

"Bit" . . . . . .183 

"Females" .... 184,213 

"Chaff" . . . . .182 

TAUTOLOGY. 

" The universal love of all men" . . .45 

" The rapidity and quick succession of conquest" . 45 
"As soon as they are made they are instantly lost" . 45 
"Harmonizing together" . . . .97 

"Preceding" ..... 144 
"It, it, it" . . . . .172 

The meaning of "tautology" » . . 194 

" Journals and periodicals " . . 155,206 



VERBS. 



" Rules and examples is " 

" The force of the emphasis are totally lost 

" The proper mixture have ever been" 

The existence of anything immutable must he 

in the present tense . 
Rule respecting contingency and futurity 
"If it be", and "if it is" 
" Though it were ", and " though it was " 
" Their general scope and tendency is " 
" The tone and emphasis serves 
The subjunctive mood 
" Its etymologies is " 
" Its definitions is " 
Confusion of tenses . .63, 122 

"As varied as is the passions' 
"As incapable of analysis as are the thing 
"Shall" and "will" 
" They has " 
"Neither of which are *' 
"It betray" 
" The majority remain ' 



expressed 



185, 



9 

. 14 

8,186 

. 54 

54 

190,219 

77 



signified" 
101, 



77 
129 
126 
126 
J 27 
128 



CONTENTS. 



" The majority speak " 

" The majority has " 

" The minority become ' 

" The number makes " 

"^4w abundance were" 

" I would like " . 

"7'o understand", or "mi understanding' 

WORDS. 

"Distinguish", or " discriminate" 

" Distinction ", or " difference " 

"Propose", or "purpose " . 

"Proposition ", or "proposal" 

" Co-temporaries ", or " Contemporaries " 

" Co-founders ", or " confounders " 

11 Co-jurors," or <; conjurors " 

" Faw/£ ", or "error " 

" 7V?/6? ", as applied to a scholar 

"Tempted" 

11 Conscious ", or u perceptible " 

"Same'* 

" Dearest" 

"Articles" 

" Consonant ", or " consonantal " 

" Numerically " 

" Classically " 

" PFicfc " and " wicked " 

" Nation " and "people " . 

" Couple " 

"Entire" 

"A deal* 

" Traced " 

"Relieve", or "exonerate " 

"Knowingly", or "wittingly' 

u Estimate" 

" /Some " 

" Suggestion " 



PAGE 

. 128 

. 128 

. 129 

. 129 

. 129 
187, 202 

. 211 



. 30 

. 30 

51, 53, 72 

53, 72 



69 

69 

71 

72 

77 

80 

81 

93, 109 

97 

98 

98 

99 

109 

140 

141 

141 

142 

142 

142 

143 

143 

144 



CONTENTS. 






XV 


PAGE 


" Audibleness" . . . . .144 


" Lying " 






. 145 


" Orthodoxy " and " heterodoxy " 






. 162 


" Currency " 






. 164 


"Plenty" 






. 184 


"Firstly" 






. 185 


" Graduated " 






. 186 


"Menelaus" 






. 192 


" Tautology " 






. 194 


" Carelessness " 




19 


9, 209 


" Superficial n ess " 






200 


"Reviews " and "revievjei's" 






208 


"Teachers" 






212 


"Forbade" 






212 


"Epithet" 






213 


"Neither" 






215 


"Altogether" 






225 


"Infallibility" 






226 



" The structure of language is extremely artificial ; and there 
" are few sciences in which a deeper or more refined logic is 
" employed, than in grammar. It is apt to he slighted hy 
" superficial thinkers, as belonging to those rudiments of know- 
" ledge, which were inculcated upon us in our earliest youth. 
" But what was then inculcated before we could comprehend its 
"principles, would abundantly repay our study in maturer 
" years." 

Dr. Hugh Blair's 
'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Leares.' 



BAD ENGLISH EXPOSED. 



CEITICISM I. 
LINDLEY MTJREAT. 

Of all the tasks of our school days, perhaps none 
was more repugnant to any of us, than the 
study of grammar ; and when, after many a good 
caning, we had at last, in some fashion, mastered 
its rules, our estimate of their value was not very 
different from the charity boy's estimate of the 
value of the alphabet which he had just learnt ; 
—we questioned whether it was worth while going 
through so much to learn so little. 

The task of working out a puzzling sum in 
arithmetic, or of solving a difficult problem in 
geometry, was, to say the least of it, one possess- 
ing some degree of interest; but what interest 
could attach to the studying of rules concerning 
verbs and pronouns ? The determining of the 



2 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

cost of a horse by the progressive amounts to be 
paid for the nails in his shoes, or the feat of 
crossing the famous bridge in the first book of 
Euclid, was, to most of us, a matter of pride; 
but what pride could a boy take in learning that 
" a verb is a ivord which signifies ' to be \ i to do \ 
"or 'to suffer'"? 

6 To suffer ' / I can imagine the almost mali- 
cious pleasure which Lindley Murray felt as he 
wrote those words, and thought of the prophetic 
significance which they had for the luckless urchins 
who should fail to understand his rules of gram- 
mar. Well, it is the pupil's turn now; and, 
notwithstanding that the old grammarian was a 
personal friend of my family's, I cannot resist 
the temptation to take up the pen against him, 
and to repay him for the terror of his name in 
my school days, by showing that, in the very 
volume in which he laid down his rules, he 
frequently expressed himself ungrammatically. 

However, it is not merely to gratify, even good 
humouredly, a boyish feeling of retaliation, that 
I enter upon this task. My chief object is to 
render some little service to those who are 
desirous of acquiring a critical knowledge of the 
English language, but who are in danger of being 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH, 3 

misled in their studies, by the bad English of one 
who has been considered our principal gramma- 
rian. 

I will not criticise the first edition of his work; 
nor, indeed, any one of the seventy editions 
which, including abridgments, were issued before 
the work had received the author's fina 1 em nda- 
tions ; but will, in simple justice to him, confine 
my criticisms to the most accurate edition pub- 
lished — -the two volume octavo edition of 1816, 
which he describes, both on the title page and 
in the preface, as " corrected ". 

First, then, he says, in strangely ungram- 
matical language, on page 10 ; — 

"Prom the sentiment generally admitted, that a 
" proper selection of faulty composition is more 
" instructive to the young grammarian, than [are] 
" any rules and examples of propriety that can be 
" given, the compiler has been induced to pay 
" particular attention to this part of the subject ; 
" and though the instances of false grammar, 
" under the rules of syntax, are numerous, it is 
" hoped [that] they will not be found too many, 
" when their variety and usefulness are con- 
" sidered." 

7, also, hope that the following instances of 
false grammar, taken from Lindley Murray's own 

b2 



4 BAD ENGLISH. [Lihdley Murray. 

composition, will not be found too many, when 
their variety and usefulness are considered; — 
their " variety ", because they relate to almost 
every part of speech in the language ; and their 
" usefulness ", because such errors, when pointed 
out as having been committed by one who pro- 
fesses to be a master of composition, are more 
impressive, and therefore more instructive, than 
any number of examples of good English could 
possibly be. 

It is scarcely necessary to mention that, in 
the foregoing quotation, Lindley Murray really 
says ;— " A proper selection of faulty composition 
" is more instructive than [is] any rules and 
"examples "! 

A similar error occurs on page 365 ; there he 
says ;— 

" Many sentences are miserably mangled, and the 
" force of the emphasis [are] totally lost ". 

Here, also, the ellipsis of the second verb is 
unallowable ; because, as in the former instance, 
the number of the nominative to that verb, is 
not the same as the number of the nominative 
to the preceding verb. In the one instance there 
is a change from the singular to the plural ; in 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 5 

the other, a change from the plural to the 
singular; and, in any such sentence, either of 
those changes will make it imperative that the 
second verb be expressed. The latter passage 
should have been written thus : — " Many sen- 
tences are miserably mangled, and the force of 
" the emphasis is totally lost ". 

Again, on page 497, I read as follows : — 

" Where a riddle is not intended, it is always a fault 
" in allegory to be too dark, [A mere truism ! 
" Of course it is a fault to be too dark.] The 
" meaning should be easily seen, through the 
" figure employed to shadow it. However, the 
" proper mixture of light and shade, in such 
" compositions : the exact adjustment of all the 
" figurative circumstances with the literal sense, 
u so as neither to lay the meaning too bare and 
" open, nor to cover and wrap it up too much; 
" have [has] ever been considered as points [a 
" point] of great nicety ". 

If the reader will carefully examine this pas- 
sage, he will see that the nominative to the verb, 
"considered", is in the singular number; and 
therefore the verb should have been in the 
singular; for, as Lindley Murray himself tells 
us, on page 218; — "A verb must agree with its 
" nominative case, in number and person ". The 
nominative is, " the proper mixture of light and 



6 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

"shade ; what follows is merely a repetition, or 
an enlargement, of that idea ; as may be shown 
in a very few words. Thus, "the exact adjust- 
"ment", mentioned in the latter part of the 
sentence, is but an other name for " the proper 
" mixture", spoken of in the early part i "to lay 
"the meaning too bare and open" is an illustra- 
tion of the term "light" ; and, "to cover and 
" ivrap it up too much " is an amplification of the 
thought conveyed by the term " shade ". Lindley 
Murray ought therefore to have said; — "The 

"proper mixture of light and shade has ever 

" been considered a point of great nicety". He 
has here violated the first rule of syntax ! 

The misuse of the adverb " too ", at which I 
glanced in a previous paragraph, is very com- 
mon. It occurs several times, even in ' Murray's 
' Grammar.' We find it on pages 465, 474, 476, 
and 497. The last of these passages, I have 
already quoted ; the others run thus : — 

" They should not be too frequently repeated ". 

" We should not do well to introduce such hard and 

" strong sounds too frequently ", 
"The members of a sentence should not be too 

" long ". 

Comment upon this point is needless. 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 7 

An other very common error, — the using of a 
wrong tense of the verb " to be ", — occurs on page 
367 ; there he says ; — 

"As the communication of these internal feelings, 
" was of much more consequence in our social 
" intercourse, than the mere conveyance of ideas, 
"the Author of our being did not, as in that 
" conveyance, leave the invention of the language 
" ©f emotion, to man; but impressed it Himself 
" upon our nature ". 

Had Lindley Murray been speaking, not of a 
universal truth, but of a circumstance that was 
peculiar to the past, his sentence would have 
been correct ; but he himself says, on page 283 ; 
— "In referring to declarations of this nature, 
"the present tense must be used, if the position 
" is immutably the same at all times, or supposed 
" to be so: as, ' The bishop declared, that virtue 
"' is always advantageous': not, 'was always 
" ' advantageous ' ". According to Lindley Mur- 
ray's own showing, then, he ought to have said ; — 
" As the communication of these internal feelings 
"is of much more consequence in our social 
"intercourse", etc. 

Some persons, intending to be strictly accurate 
in their expressions, always say; — "if it be", 



8 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

" though it were "; never, "if it is", " though it 
"was". They imagine that "if", "though", 
and certain other conjunctions which imply con- 
tingency, ought always to be followed by a verb 
in the subjunctive mood. But it is only when 
there is a concurrence of contingency and futurity, 
that the verb should be in the subjunctive mood. 
When there is either contingency without futurity, 
or futurity without contingency, the verb must be 
in the indicative mood. The only exception to 
this rule occurs in the use of the imperfect tense 
of the verb "to be," when our language is in- 
tended to denote contingency merely. The verb 
must then be in the subjunctive mood. See 
Lindley Murray's observations on Eule XIX of 
his ' Grammar' But, notice how widely his 
practice diverges from his precepts :— 

Page 51. — " A consonant is not of itself a distinct 
" articulate voice ; and its influence in varying the 
" tones of language is not clearly perceived, unless 
"it be [is] accompanied by an opening of the 
" mouth, that is, by a vowel." 

Page 64. — "If this be [is] admitted, it follows, that 
" the noun and the verb are the only parts of 
" speech, which are essentially necessary." 

Page 193. — " When a discourse is not well connected, 
" the sentiments, however just, are easily for- 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 9 

" gotten ; or, if a few be [are] remembered, yet 
" their general scope and tendency, having never 
" been clearly apprehended, is [are] not remem- 
" bered at all." 

The reader will perceive, by the italicised words 
in the foregoing quotations, that in each instance 
the time of the action is present, not future. 
Therefore, the verb which follows the conjunction 
ought to be in the indicative mood. 

The last of the passages quoted contains two 
errors ; for, Lindley Murray errs not only in 
employing the subjunctive mood, but also in 
putting in the singular number, a verb, to which 
the nominative is in the plural. Thus he violates 
his second rule of syntax, which says; — "Two 
"or more nouns, etc. in the singular number, 
"joined together by a copulative conjunction, 
"expressed or understood, must have verbs, 
"nouns, and pronouns, agreeing with them in 
"the plural number ". — Page 225. 

Again, "It is evidently contrary to the first 
"principles of grammar, to consider two distinct 
" ideas as one, however nice may be their shades 
"of difference: and if there be no difference, 
" one of them must be superfluous, and ought to 
" be rejected."— Page 226. 



10 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

Dr. Blair, also, whom Lindley Murray quotes, 
observes that, "two or more substantives, joined 
" by a copulative, must always require the verb 
"or [the] pronoun to which they refer, to be 
"placed in the plural number." Lindley Murray 
adds, on page 227 ; — " and this is the general sen- 
timent of English grammarians.' ' Yet, he 
himself says, in the quotation which I have 
given ; — " their scope and tendency is [they is !] 
"not remembered at all." 

These errors occur in the best edition of 
'Lindley Murray's Grammar'; an edition pub- 
lished under the supervision of the author ; and 
after his work had been one-and-twenty years 
before the public ! 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 11 



CEITICISM II. 
LINDLEY MUEEAY. 

Fkom the consideration of Lindley Murray's errors 
in the use of verbs, let us now turn to that of his 
errors in the use of adverbs. He Bays, on page 
290 ; — "Adverbs, though they have no government 
" of case, tense, etc. require an appropriate situa- 
tion in the sentence ". Undoubtedly they do; 
and that situation, as we learn from page 445, 
is, as near as possible to the words which are 
most closely related to them. But has Lindley 
Murray uniformly placed his adverbs in appro- 
priate situations ? Certainly not. I read as 
follows : — 

Page 236. — "A term which only implies the idea of 
" persons ". 

This should have been ; — " A term which im- 
" plies the idea of persons only ". 

Page 365. — " When the voice is only suspended for a 
" moment ". 



12 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

This should have been ; — " When the voice is 
" suspended for only a moment ". 

Sometimes the adverb is required to be placed 

after the auxiliary, and sometimes before it ; and 

which of these constructions we should employ 

in a particular instance, will depend upon the 

meaning which we wish to express. For example ; 

if we wish to say that it is proper that certain 

rules should be written ; our words may be 

arranged thus : — " The rules should properly be 

" written ". But if we wish to say, not that it is 

proper that they should be written; but, that 

they should be written in a proper manner ; then 

we must change the position of the adverb and 

say; — "The rules should be properly written ". 

This is very simple ; but it is a matter which has 

been quite overlooked by Lindley Murray, as the 

following passages will show : — 

Page 102. — " Perhaps the words 'former * and ' latter ' 
" may be properly ranked amongst the demonstra- 
" tive pronouns ". 

Say, rather ; — " may properly be ranked ". 

Page 300. — " The preposition ' among ' . . . . 
" cannot be properly used in conjunction with the 
" word 'every'". 

Say, rather ; — " cannot properly be used ". 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 13 

Page 403. — " The colon may he properly applied in the 
" three following cases." 

" Say, rather ; — " may properly be applied ". 

In the foregoing sentences, Lindley Murray 
speaks of the things as being properly done; 
whereas, he intended to speak of them as being 
proper to do. See some remarks on this subject in 
' The Dean's English ', page 101. 

The adverb "also" is misplaced by Lindley 
Murray ; e.g. :— 

Page 415. — " The first word of an example may also 
" very properly begin with a capital ". 

Better thus : — " The first word of an example 
" also, may very properly begin ", etc. 

The adverbs, "rather" and "even", likewise, 
are misplaced by him. Indeed, the former is 
misplaced in a sentence occurring in the very 
part of his Grammar, which treats of the proper 
position of adverbs ! 

Page 293. — " This mode of expression rather suits , 
" familiar than grave style." 

Our grammarian should have said; — " suits a 
" familiar rather than a grave style." 

Page 454. — " It is a frequent and capital error, in the 
"writings even of some distinguished authors ". 



1* BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

This should have been; — "in the writings of 
" even some distinguished authors ". 

Concerning such sentences as those which I 
have quoted, and the position of adverbs gener- 
ally, Dr. Blair says ; — " The fact is, with respect 
"to such adverbs as, only, wholly, at least, and 
" the rest of that tribe, that in common discourse, 
" the tone and emphasis we use in pronouncing 
"them, generally serves [they serves!] to show 
" their reference, and to make the meaning clear ; 
" and hence, we acquire a habit of throwing them 
" in loosely in the course of a period. But, in 
" writing, where a man speaks to the eye and 
" not to the ear, he ought to be more accurate ; 
" and so to connect those adverbs with the words 
"which they qualify, as to put his meaning out 
" of doubt upon the first inspection." — 'Lectures 
'on Rhetoric', page 116. 

There is one other matter of which I must 
speak before concluding my remarks on ad- 
verbs ; and that is, the misuse of what may be 
called superlative adverbs; such as "totally", 
" supremely ", " absolutely ", and " universally ". 
The nature of these words forbids their being 
qualified by "so", or "more", or "most"; or 
indeed, by any word implying comparison. The 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 15 

reason is obvious. Take, for example, the adverb 
"totally". It is evident that if we attempt to 
qualify it by prefixing the word "so", we convey 
the idea that there are degrees of totality; in 
other words, that a thing may, for instance, be 
totally unknown, and yet not totally unknown. 
In short, our expression amounts to the absurdity 
of saying, that a whole may be either less or 
more than itself! 

On page 250, Lindley Murray very justly objects 
to the expressions "so extreme", "so universal", 
"etc.; because, adjectives that have in them- 
selves a superlative signification, do not admit 
of either the superlative or the comparative 
form super-added. But, surely, what is, in this 
respect, true of superlative adjectives, is true 
equally of the corresponding adverbs ? Yet we 
should scarcely learn this from Lindley Murray's 
own language ; for, on page 501, he speaks of 
certain objects as being 

" 80 totally unknown "! 

Respecting adverbs and adjectives, it has been 
remarked that it is often difficult to decide, in 
particular sentences, whether an adverb, or an 



16 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

adjective ought to be used. For example, on 
page 287, Lindley Murray says ; — 

" This construction sounds rather harshly ". 

Is this sentence correct ? I think not. The 
verb " sounds' 9 , as there used, is a neuter verb ; 
one not expressing an action, but a state of 
being ; and neuter verbs should not be qualified 
by adverbs, but by adjectives. 

This is in accordance with Lindley Murray's 
own teaching. He tells us, on page 163, of vol. 2, 
that, in such cases, we ought to consider whether 
we wish to express quality, or manner. If quality, 
then we must employ an adjective; if manner, 
then, an adverb. In the foregoing quotation, as 
he did not wish to speak of the manner of 
sounding, but of the quality of sound, he ought 
to have said ; — " The construction sounds rather 
" harsh 99 ; not " harshly 99 . 

The following examples, taken from ' Lindley 
'Murray's Grammar 9 , illustrate this matter very 
forcibly : — 

" She looks cold." — " She looks coldly on him." 
" He feels warm" — " He feels warmly the insult offered 
"to him." 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 17 

The reader will observe that when the verb is 
intransitive, i.e., when the action does not pass 
on to some object, the adjective is used; e.g.: 
— " She looks cold." But when the same verbis 
transitive, the adverb is used; e.g. : — " She looks 
"coldly on him." 

An other mode of determining whether an 
adverb, or an adjective, should be employed, is 
thus given by Lindley Murray : — " The verb to be, 
"in all its moods and tenses, generally requires 
" the word immediately connected with it to be an 
" adjective, not an adverb ; and, consequently, 
" when this verb can be substituted for any other, 
"without varying the sense or the construction, 
"that other verb must also be connected with an 
r adjective. The following sentences elucidate 
" these observations : — ' The rose smells [or is] 
" * sweet '. ' How delightful the country appears ' 
"[oris]. 'The clouds look [or are] dark'. In 
" all these sentences, we can, with perfect pro- 
" priety, substitute some tenses of the verb to be 
"for the other verbs. But in the following 
" sentences, we cannot do this : " The dog smells 
" * disagreeably' ; ' George feels exquisitely'." 

This is an excellent rule of Lindley Murray's ; 
but nothing could be more unfortunate than one of 



c 



) 



18 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

his illustrations of it. He very properly tells us 
that we ought to say ; — " The rose smells sweet " 
[is sweet] ; but he adds, or, at least, implies, 
that we cannot say; — " The dog smells disagree- 
" able " [is disagreeable] . In other words, we 
must say that, the scent of the rose is sweet ; but, 
the scent of the dog is disagreeabfo/ / 

That such errors as these are to be found in 
'An English Grammar, Comprehending the Prin- 
' ciples and Rules of the Language ', is indeed 
astonishing. 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 19 



CEITICISM III. 

LINDLEY MUEEAY. 

Having considered some of Lindley Murray's 
errors in the use of verbs, adverbs, and adjec- 
tives ; we will now consider some of his errors in 
the use of pronouns. 

Concerning them, he says, on page 232 ; — "Pro- 
" nouns must always agree with their antecedents, 
f and the nouns for which they stand, in gender 
" and number". He adds, " Of this rule there 
" are many violations to be met with; a few of 
" which may be sufficient to put the learner on 
"his guard. 'Each of the sexes should keep 
I ' within its particular bounds, and content them- 
" 'selves with the advantages of their particular 
"< districts V 

Although Lindley Murray thus endeavours "to 
"put the learner on his guard", the teacher 
so far forgets his own instructions, as to say, on 
page 416 ; — 



-0 BAD ENGLISH. [Lin.lley Murray. 

"The facts, premises, and conclusions, of a subject, 
" sometimes naturally point out the separations 
" into paragraphs : and each of these, when of 
" great length, will again require subdivision at 
"their most distinctive parts." ! 

This is one of the most frequent of vulgar 
errors. 

Another, almost equally common, is the "and 
" ivhich " error. This consists in the employment 
of the words "and which" in a sentence not 
containing, in the preceding part of it, the word 
"ivhich", either expressed or understood. The 
error is one that young writers frequently fall 
into ; and, strange to say, it is found in some of 
even Lindley Murray's sentences. The following 
example is from page 8 of his Grammar : — 

"The more important rules, definitions, and observa- 
tions, and which are therefore the most proper 
" to be committed to memory, are printed with a 
" larger type '\ 

This sentence is extremely faulty. Firstly, be- 
cause it contains the a and whicli" error; and, se- 
condly, because the relative adverb " therefore", that 
follows those words, has really not any antecedent 
that is grammatically connected with it. Lindk*v 
Murray ought to have said; — " The rules, definitions, 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 



21 



" and observations which are the more important, 
w and which are therefore the most proper to be com- 
■* mitted to memory, are printed in larger type". 

The "and which" error occurs on page 379 
also. We there read : — 

" From the preceding view of English, versification, 
" we may see what a copions stock of materials 
" it possesses. For we are not only allowed the 
" nse of all the ancient poetic feet, in our heroic 
" measure, but we have, as before observed, du- 
" plicates of each, agreeing in movement, though 
" differing in measure, <md which make different 
" impressions on the ear ; an opulence peculiar to 
" our language, and which may be the source of 
" a boundless variety." 

Even were the foregoing sentence grammati- 
cally correct, the repetition of "and which" 
would stamp it as being inelegant, But the 
sentence is constructed in direct violation of the 
writer's eighteenth rule of syntax, which says ; — - 
" Conjunctions connect the same moods and 
"tenses of verbs, and cases of nouns and pro- 
"nouns". The latter part of the sentence 
ought therefore to have been written thus : — 
" But we have, as before observed, duplicates of 
" each, agreeing in movement, though differing 
" in measure, and making [not ' and which make 9 ] 



22 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

" different impressions on the ear; an opulence 
"which is peculiar to our language, and which 
"may be the source of a boundless variety." 

The excessive employment of the pronoun 
" ivhich" is an error so common with the il- 
literate, that good writers, in their endeavours to 
avoid it, often run into the opposite extreme. 
They omit the pronoun, in sentences where its 
presence is really necessary to the grammatical 
arrangement of the words. An instance of this 
occurs in Lindley Murray's work, page 305. He 
there says ;— 

" Almost all the irregularities, in the construction of 
" any language, have arisen from the ellipsis of 
" some words, which were originally inserted in 
" the sentence, and [which] made it regular". 

The word "which" is necessary here, because 
when there is a change in the verbs, the nomi- 
native should be repeated ; and, in Lindley 
Murray's sentence, there is a change from a 
passiveto an active verb. Hesays;— "words, which 
"were originally inserted, [there the verb is 
"passive] and [which] made it regular"; [there 
the verb is active] . Without the repetition of 
the nominative "which", the sentence would 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 23 

really read thus : — " words which to ere originally 
"inserted, and [which ivere] made it regular" ! 

Lindley Murray himself says, on page 302 ; — 
" When, in the progress of a sentence, we pass 
" from the affirmative to the negative form, or from 
"the negative to the affirmative, the subject or 
" nominative is mostly, if not invariably, resumed. 
" ...There appears to be, in general, equal reason 
" for repeating the nominative, and resuming the 
"subject, when the course of the sentence is 
" diverted by a change in the mood or tense." 

It is remarkable that Lindley Murray's error, 
of omitting the pronoun "which", is in a sentence 
concerning irregularities of language arising 
from ellipses. 

Many writers consider the repetition of a word 
in a sentence, to be an inelegance. But though 
variety gives vivacity to our expressions, it is not 
always a beauty ; for, sometimes it obscures the 
meaning ; and, at other times, it is positively 
ungrammatical. 

With regard to the repetition of relative pro- 
nouns, it is a rule that, 

" Whatever relative is used, in one series of clauses, 
" relating to the same antecedent, the same rela- 
" tive ought generally to be used in them all." 



24 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

Thus wrote Lindley Murray, on page 233, and 
illustrated his remarks by the following example : 
— "It is remarkable, that Holland, against tvliich 
"the war was undertaken, and that, in the 
"very beginning, was reduced to the brink of 
" destruction, lost nothing. " He adds ; — " The 
" clause ought to have been, ' and which in the 
" ' very beginning'." 

Notwithstanding his having thus laid down 
the law; (which, by the way, he has done in 
ungrammatical language; for, the words, "the 
"same relative", are redundant:) we find him 
writing, on page 517 ; — 

" A sentiment which is expressed in accnrate lan- 
" gnage, and in a period, clearly, neatly, and well 
" arranged, always makes a stronger impression 
" on the mind, than one that is expressed in- 
" accurately ". 

On page 51, also, we find him writing thus : — 

" Those are called ' labials ', which are formed by the 
" lips ; those ' dentals ', that are formed with the 
" teeth ". 

He changes not only the pronoun, but also the 
preposition in the latter part of this sentence. 
He should have said ; — " Those are called 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 25 

"' labials', which are formed by the lips; those 
" ' dentals', which are formed by the teeth ". 
Again, on page 35, he says ; — 

" The vocal semi-vowels may be subdivided into pure 
" and impure. The pure are those which are 
" formed entirely by the voice : the impure, such 
" as have a mixture of breath with the voice." 

In this passage, the latter part of the sentence 
should have the same pronoun as the former part. 
Lindley Murray should have said ; — " The pure 
" are those which are formed entirely by the 
"voice; the impure, those which have a mixture 
" of breath with the voice." 

In reading the following sentence, on page 315 
of Lindley Murray's ' Grammar ', we are in doubt 
at first, as to what the relative pronoun "which" 
refers to : — 

" The propriety or impropriety of many phrases, in 
" the preceding as well as in some other forms, 
" may be discovered, by supplying the words 
" that are not expressed; which will be evident 
" from the following instances of erroneous con- 
" struct ion." 

Lindley Murray's sentence is, itself, an " in- 
stance of erroneous construction". He should 
have said; — " this will be evident " ; for, " which", 
being both singular and plural, may refer either 



26 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

to the circumstance, or to the words, spoken of; 
whereas, "this", being singular only, must refer 
to the circumstance. 

One more example. On page 425, Lindley 
Murray says ; — 

" Authors sometimes plead the difficulty of their 
" subject, as an excuse for their want of per- 
"spicuity. But the excuse can rarely, if ever, 
"be admitted. For [,] whatever a man conceives 
" clearly, he may, if he will be at the trouble, put 
"it into distinct propositions, and express it 
" clearly to others : and upon no subject ought 
"any man to write, where he cannot think 
" clearly." 

Lindley Murray evidently forgot, that, as 
personal pronouns are used to supply the place 
of nouns, there is not, except in emphatic sen- 
tences, any necessity for using,in the same part 
of a sentence, both the noun, and the pronoun 
which represents the noun : e.g., Shenstone 



" My hanlcs they are furnished with bees 

" Whose murmur invites one to sleep." — p. 284. 

On page 234, Lindley Murray condemns the 
error ; yet, in the sentence of his which I have 
quoted above, he falls into it; as a very few 
words will show. Omit the parenthetical clause 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 27 

which is in his sentence, and you will find that 
he says ; — " Whatever a man conceives clearly, 
"he may put it into distinct propositions, and 
"express it clearly to others". The pronoun 
" it", in each instance, should have been omitted. 

The last clause of the sentence is equally 
faulty; it reads thus : — " Upon no subject ought 
"any man to write, where he cannot think 
" clearly." " Where", being an adverb of place, 
is unsuitably employed in this instance. Lindley 
Murray should have said; — "Upon no subject 
"ought any man to write, upon which he cannot 
" think clearly." We write upon a subject ; and 
we think upon a subject ; but we cannot say that 
we think in a subject. Yet that is what Lindley 
Murray's language implies. 

A strange error occurs on page 486. He there 
says ;— 

" We shall enumerate the principal figures, and give 
" them some explanation. " 

Of course he means; — "and give some expla- 
" nation of them" 

These are, certainly, remarkable errors for an 
author to commit when actually writing on the 
improprieties of the English language. 



28 BAD E1SGL1SH. [Lindley Murray. 



CEITICISM IV. 

LIKDLEY MUEEAY. 

Dr. Blair says, and Lindley Murray quotes the 
words; — "All that regards the study of compo- 
" sition, merits the higher attention upon this 
"account, that it is intimately connected with 
"the improvement of our intellectual powers. 
"For I must be allowed to say, that when we 
"are employed, after a proper manner, in the 
" study of composition, we are cultivating the 
"understanding itself. The study of arranging 
" and expressing our thoughts with propriety, 
"teaches to think, as well as to speak accu- 
"rately. ,, 

It is evident, however, that all Lindley Murray's 
" study of arranging and expressing his thoughts 
"with propriety", did not teach him to speak 
accurately ; at least, not accurately according to 
his own rules. Judging him by his own standard, 
he errs in the use of even the articles. 

On page 320, he tells us that it is incorrect to 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 29 

say ; — " A house and orchard" ; because as there 
is, in the expression, but one article, it is under- 
stood as referring to both nouns ; and though we 
may say; — "A house", we may not say; — "A 
" orchard". The expression, then, should be ; — 
" A house and an orchard". This being 
Lindley Murray's rule, let us see how his lan- 
guage conforms to it. 

Page 52. — "Words duly combined produce a sentence ; 
"and sentences properly combined produce an 
" oration or discourse." 

i.e., " an oration or [an] discourse " ! 

Page 517. — "A sentiment which is expressed in ac- 
" curate language, and in a period, clearly, neatly, 
" and well arranged, always makes a stronger im- 
" pression on the mind, than one that is expressed 
"inaccurately, or in a feeble or embarrassed 
"manner." 

i.e., "in a feeble or [a] embarrassed manner" ! 

Vol. II., page 7. — " The compiler would hare deemed 
" himself culpable, had he exhibited such sentences , 
" as contained ideas inapplicable to young minds, 
" or which were of a trivial or injurious nature." 

i.e., " of a trivial or [a] injurious nature " ! 

It is the notion of plurality, contained in these 
passages, which necessitates the repetition of the 
article. 



30 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

The repetition of the article is necessary in 
such a sentence as this also ; I quote from page 
408:— 

" It is difficult, in some cases, to distinguish between 
"an interrogative and exclamatory sentence". 

Say, rather ; — " between an interrogative and 
"an exclamatory sentence"; otherwise, the 
words will read as if they formed a part of an 
unfinished observation respecting an interroga- 
tive and exclamatory sentence, and a sentence 
of some other kind. But it would have been 
better still, to say; — "between an interroga- 
tory and an exclamatory sentence". Where 
practicable, the adjectives thus brought into 
contrast should be alike in form. There is a 
third error in this simple sentence : Lindley 
Murray says ; " It is difficult, in some cases, to 
"distinguish between". He should have said; — 
"discriminate between". We distinguish one 
thing from another ; but we discriminate between 
two or more things. On page 498, he speaks of 

"explaining the distinction, between the powers of 
"sense and imagination". 

We make a distinction ; but it is a difference , 
which we explain. 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 31 

We have thus found that Lindley Murray 
repeatedly errs in the use of verbs, adverbs, 
adjectives, pronouns, and articles. Let us now 
see whether he is not equally faulty in his use of 
nouns, conjunctions, and prepositions. 

First, then, with respect to nouns. He says, 
on page 145 ; — 

" Will, in the first person singular and plural, inti- 
" mates resolution and promising; in the second 
" and third person only foretells ". 

He should have said, either ; — " in the second 
"and third persons"; — or, "in the second and 
" the third person". This was necessary in order 
to show that he was speaking of two persons ; 
the one, second; the other, third; and not of 
one person, both second and third; supposing 
that to be possible. 

"The reader's knowledge", as Dr. Campbell 
(quoted by Lindley Murray, on page 258) observes, 
"may prevent his mistaking the language; but, 
"if such modes of expression be admitted where 
"the sense is clear, they may inadvertently be 
" imitated in cases where the meaning would be 
"obscure, if not entirely misunderstood. ,, Be- 
sides, in the very next paragraph, Lindley Murray 
uses the correct noun: he says; — "Shall, on the 



32 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

"contrary, in the first person, simply foretells; 
"in the second and third persons, promises, 
" commands, or threatens." 

An error, the exact reverse of that just referred to, 
occurs on page 412. Lindley Murray there says; — 

" This character is chiefly used in the Old, and in the 

" New Testaments." 

This is a very common error. Clergymen are 
frequently heard saying; — "Let us sing the 
" hundredth psalm, omitting the second and the 
"third verses." Other clergymen, equally faulty 
in grammar, say; — "Let us sing the hundredth 
"psalm, omitting the second and third verse." 
Both forms are wrong. When the noun is in the 
plural, the article must not be repeated before the 
second adjective : we should say;— "the second 
" and third verses." But when the noun is in 
the singular, the article must be repeated before 
the second adjective : we should say ; — " the 
" second, and the third, verse." Lindley Murray 
should have said; — "This character is chiefly used 
"in the Old, and in the New, Testament." 

We will now consider his errors in the use of 
conjunctions. On page 465, we find him saying, 
concerning connective particles ; — 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 33 

" They should not be either too frequently repeated, 
"awkwardly exposed to view, or made up of 
" polysyllables, when shorter words would as well 
" convey the meaning." 

Now, " either" means one of tivo ; but Lindley 
Murray has, in the sentence just quoted, used 
it in speaking of one of three, and therefore has 
misused it. His sentence ought to have been ;~ 
" They should not be very frequently repeated, 
" nor should they be awkwardly exposed to view, 
" or be made up of polysyllables when shorter 
" words would as well convey the meaning." 

" Whether", also, refers to two only, and is, in 
strictness, "which of two"; yet Lindley Murray 
uses it in speaking of four, and says, on page 
479;— 

" It is requisite, that we fix in our mind a just idea of 
"the general tone of sound which suits our 

" subject; that is, whether round and smooth, 

" or stately and solemn, or brisk and quick, or 
" interrupted and abrupt." 

Some authors defend this use of the word ; but 
they do so, more on the ground of expediency, 
than on that of grammatical accuracy. I 
should write Lindley Murray's sentence thus ; — - 
" It is requisite that we fix in our minds a just 

D 



34 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray.' 

" idea of the general tone of sound which suits 
" our subject ; that is, whether round and smooth, 
"or interrupted and abrupt; whether brisk and 
" quick, or stately and solemn." 
On page 384, I read : — 

" We have before shown that the cassura improves the 
" melody of verse ; and we shall now speak of its 
" other [and] more important office, that of being 
" the chief source of harmony in numbers." 

In this sentence, the necessity for the con- 
junction "and", after the word " other", will be 
apparent to the most superficial reader. 

On page 390, I read : — 

" Few precise rules can be given, which will hold, 
" without exception, in all cases ; but much muse 
" be left to the judgment and taste of the writer." 

Lindley Murray should have said, either ; — " A 
"few precise rules can be given, but much must 
" be left to the judgment ", etc. ; or else ; — " Few 
" precise rules can be given; much must be 
" left ", etc. The former expression has the article 
" a" inserted before "few" ; the latter expression 
has the conjunction " but" struck out. " A few", 
having an affirmative meaning, may be followed 
by "but". Whereas, "few", having a negative 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 35 

meaning, does not admit the conjunction "bat" 
after it, in the sentence quoted above. 

With regard to the conjunction " that "; 
Lindley Murray says, on page 323; — " There is a 
"very common ellipsis of the conjunction 
"that": as ' He told me [that] he would proceed 
" ' immediately.' This ellipsis is tolerable in 
"conversation, and in epistolary writing, but it 
" should be sparingly indulged in [in] every other 
" species of composition." Lindley Murray's 
practice, however, is sometimes as follows ; page 
4:— 

" In its present form, the work is designed for the 
" nse of persons, who may think [that] it merits 
" a place in their libraries. " 

Again, page 484 : — 

" This cannot be called a resemblance between the 
" sense and the sound, seeing [that] long or short 
" syllables have ", etc. 

The copulative conjunction "and" is some- 
times erroneously used instead of the disjunctive 
conjunction " or ". For instance, on page 172, 
Lindley Murray says ; — 

" It is obvious that a language like the Greek and 
"Latin", etc. 



38 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

He should have said; — "a language like the 
" Greek or the Latin". 

On page 30, also, the same error is found. 
Lindley Murray there says ; — 

" A perfect alphabet of tlie English, language, and, 
" indeed, of every other language, would contain 
" a numbers of letters, precisely -equal to the 
" number of single articulate sounds belonging 
" to the language." 

He should have said; — "A perfect alphabet of 
" the English language, or, [not " and"] indeed, of 
"any other language, would contain", etc. 

In the following sentence, taken from page 
364, the conjunction "as", signifying "that", is 
apt to be mistaken for the adverb "as", signify- 
ing "in the same manner" : — 

" Such pauses have the same effect as [better " that "] 
" a strong emphasis [has] ; and are subject to the 
" same rules ; especially to the caution just now 
" given of not [" against " would have been 
" better] repeating them too frequently." 

Is a rule a caution ? Lindley Murray says ; — 
"subject to the same rules; especially to the 
" caution just now given". 

Surely it is well to caution the public against 
being misled by such English as this. 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 37 

Let us now look at some of Lindley Murray's 
sentences in which the conjunction " both " is 
used; and we shall find that he is at fault in 
those also : — 

Page 122. — "The perfect tense, and the imperfect 
" tense, both denote a thing that is past ". 

As he did not intend the conjunction to apply 
to the verb " denote ", but to the perfect and im- 
perfect tenses, he should have placed it before 
them, and have said; — "Both the perfect tense and 
"the imperfect tense, denote a thing that is past". 

Page 306. — "That both the circumstances of contingency 
" and futurity are necessary will be evident ", etc. 

This language implies that the writer was 
speaking, not of the circumstance of contingency 
and the circumstance of futurity, but, of two 
circumstances of contingency, etc. He should 
have said ; — " That both the circumstance of 
" contingency and that of futurity are necessary, 
"will be evident", etc. 

Page 382. — "We shall consider each of these three 
" objects in versification, both with respect to the 
"feet and the pauses." 

We naturally wonder at the "pause" at the 



38 BAD ENGLISH. [Xindley Murray. 

end of this sentence ; for, the construction of it 
leads us to believe that it is incomplete ; and 
that the writer intended to continue it thus : — 
" both with respect to the feet and the pauses, and 
" with respect to " — something else. He should 
have said; — "We shall consider each of these 
"three objects in versification, with respect both 
" to the feet, and to the pauses." 

The same error occurs twice on page 125. 
Lindley Murray there says ; — 

" The present, past, and future tenses, may be used 
" either definitely or indefinitely, both with re- 
" sped to time and action." 

Say, rather; — "with respect both to time and 
" to action." 

When the conjunction "both" is followed by a 
preposition, that preposition must be repeated 
after the conjunction "and", in the succeeding 
part of the sentence; as, — "This, in philosophical 
" writing, has a disagreeable effect, both upon the 
"memory, and upon the understanding of the 
"reader." — 'Lindley Murray's Grammar', p. 193. 

Lindley Murray's practice, however, is not 
uniform. He says, on page 153 ; — 

" In other languages, a principle of this nature has 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 39 

"been admitted, both in the conjugation of verbs, 
" and [in] the declension of nouns." 

In the following sentence, the conjunction 
" both " is redundant. 

Page 329. — " Performing at the same time the offices 
both of the nominative and objective cases.'' 

If the conjunction " both " be retained, then the 
sentence should be written thus :— " Performing 
" at the same time the offices both of the nomi- 
" native and of the objective case." 

The teaching of the foregoing criticisms re- 
specting the conjunction "both", may be sum- 
med up thus : — 

In a compound sentence formed with the con- 
junctions "both" and "and", if an article, or a 
preposition, or both, follow the former, then that 
article, or that preposition, or both, must be 
repeated after the latter. 



40 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 



CEITICISM V. 

LINDLEY MURKAY. 

A brief review of Lindley Murray's errors in the 
use of prepositions will conclude this part of our 
subject. We shall afterwards consider his errors 
in the structure of sentences. 

With regard to prepositions, then, we find 
Lindley Murray writing as follows : — 

Page 61. — "A substantive may, in general, be dis- 
" tinguished by its taking an article before it, or by 
"its making sense of itself". 

Say; — "making sense by itself ". 

Page 77. — "This gives our language a superior ad- 
" vantage to most others". 

Say ; — "an advantage over most others ". 

"Superior advantage" is tautology. 

Page 113. — " The participle is a certain form of the 
" verb, and derives its name from its participating, 
" not only o/the properties of a verb, but also of 
"those of an adjective ". 

Say ; — " participating in " ; or, (i partaking of\ 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 41 

Page 125. — " In respect of time ". 

Say ; — " With respect to time " ; as, indeed, 
Lindley Murray does say in the next paragraph. 

Page 194. — " The Greeks were the greatest reasoners 
" that ever appeared in the world ; and their lan- 
" gnage, accordingly, abounds more than any 
" other in connectives." 

Say, either; — "the language abounds with con- 
nectives"; or, — " connectives abound in the 
" language." 

Page 221. — " Independently on the rest of the 
" sentence". 

Say ; — " Independently of the rest of the 
"sentence". We say; — "pendent /rom", "de- 
" pendent on ", "independent of". 

Page 365. — "To render pauses pleasing and expressive, 
" they must not only be made in the right place, 
" but also [be] accompanied ivith a proper tone of 
" voice". 

Say; — "accompanied by a proper tone of- 
" voice." 

Page 441.- — " A person thoroughly conversant in the 
" propriety of the language ". 

Say; — "conversant with the propriety of the 
"language". 



42 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

Page 487. — "This being the case, we may see the 
" necessity of some attention ". 



Say ; — "the necessity for some attention". 

It were easy to multiply instances of Lindley 
Murray's errors in the use of the different parts 
of speech. I have thought it sufficient to give 
examples of his errors. His numerous inconsist- 
ences are truly astonishing. On page 325, he 
says; — " The examples that follow are produced 
"to show the impropriety of ellipsis in some par- 
ticular cases : ' In the temper of mind he was 
" ' then ' ; i.e., i in which he then was \ Again, 
" ' The little satisfaction and consistency, to be 
"'found in most of the systems of divinity I 
" ' have met with, made me betake myself to the 
" ' sole reading of the Scriptures ' : it ought to 
"be, ( which are to be found', and c which I have 
"'met with'." Yet, though Lindley Murray 
could thus teach others ; he could say, on page 
360;— 



" Learning to read, in the best manner it is now 
" tanght ". 

He should have said; — "in the best manner 
" in which it is now taught '\ 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 43 

Here, too, is a strange sentence for a gramma- 
rian to have written : — 

Page 367. — " Tones are different both from emphasis 
" [emphases] and [from] pauses ; consisting of 
" [and consist of] the modulation of the voice, 
" [or of] the notes or variations of sound which 
" we employ in the expression of [in expressing] 
" our sentiments." 

But the following specimen of awkward con- 
struction is even more strange : — 

Page 452. — " In every composition there is always 
" some connecting principle among the parts. 
" Some one object must reign and be predominant. 
" But most of all, in a single sentence, is required 
" the strictest unity." 

First, "In every composition there is always 
" some connecting principle among the parts." 
Why say "always"? Whatever is in a compo- 
sition, forms a part of it ; consequently, whatever 
is there once, is there always. You may alter 
the composition; but if you alter it, it is no 
longer the same composition. The word "alivays", 
in Lindley Murray's sentence, is therefore redun- 
dant, and should be struck out. It would be 
better to say, likewise; — "there is some connexion 
"among the parts"; than to say; — "there is 
" some connecting principle among the parts." 



44 BAD ENGLISH. [Lindley Murray. 

The next sentence is ; — " Some one object must 
" reign and be predominant." What grandilo- 
quent nonsense is this ? If an object can be 
said to "reign", of course it is "predominant" . 
Why could not Lindley Murray be content to 
say; — " Some object must predominate" ? 

The concluding sentence is as follows ; — " But 
"most of all, in a single sentence is required the 
" strictest unity ". Why all this inversion ? Why 
not say ; — " But the strictest unity is required in 
" a single sentence" ; or, " But it is in a single 
sentence that the strictest unity is required " ? 

On page 459, Lindley Murray tells us that ;— 
" The first rule for promoting the strength of a 
"sentence, is to prune it of all redundant words 
" and members" ; yet, within a very few pages of 
this remark, we find in his own language the 
following specimen of verbosity : — 

Page 452. — " In this sentence, though the objects 
" contained in it have a sufficient connexion with 
" each other, yet, by this manner of representing 
" them, by shifting so often both the place and the 
" person, we and they, and I and who, they appear 
" in so disunited a view, that the sense of con- 
" nexion is much impaired". 

In this sentence, he has employed fifty-five 



Lindley Murray. j BAD ENGLISH. 45 

words, in order to express what might thus be 
expressed more clearly in thirty-two : — 

"Although the objects in this sentence are 
" sufficiently connected, the frequent changing of 
"the pronoun — we, they, I, ivho — -makes them 
" appear so disunited that the sense of connection 
"is much impaired". His sentence contains 
three-and-twenty words too many ! 

On page 461, Lindley Murray very properly 
objects to such tautological expressions as, 
"Forced to get home, partly by stealth, and 
"partly hy force"; and, "The universal love and 
"esteem of all men". But, only three pages 
further on, we find him saying ;— 

"'I came, I saw, I conquered', expresses, with more 
" force, the rapidity and quick succession of con- 
" quest, than if connecting particles had been 
" used." 

Again, on page 498, he says, of certain impres- 
sions ; — - 

"As soon as they are made, they are instantly lost." 

Concerning the order of words in a sentence, 
Lindley Murray says, on page 449; — "When 
"different things have an obvious relation to 



46 BAD ENGLISH. [lindley Murray. 

" each other, in respect to the order of nature or 
"time, that order should be regarded, in assign- 
ing them their places in the sentence ; unless 
"the scope of the passages require it to be 
"varied. The conclusion of the following lines 
"is inaccurate, in this respect: 'But still there 
"'will be such a mixture of delight, as is pr- 
oportioned to the degree in which any one of 
"'these qualifications is most conspicuous and 
" ' prevailing \ The order in which the two last 
" [the last two] words are placed, should have 
"been reversed, and made to stand, prevailing 
" and conspicuous. — They are conspicuous, because 
" they prevail ". 

I turn over one leaf only, and find that Lindley 
Murray has quite forgotten all that he had said 
about the order of the words in a sentence. On 
page 453, he writes as follows : — ' * 

" The violation of this rule tends so much to perplex 
" and obscure, that ", etc. 

Adopting Lindley Murray's own form of criti- 
cism, I say; — " The order in which the last two 
"words are placed, should have been reversed, 
" and made to stand, obscure and perplex. The 
"perplexity is occasioned by the obscurity." 



Lindley Murray.] BAD ENGLISH. 47 

Concerning precision, Lindley Murray says, on 

page 438 ; — 

" It signifies retrenching superfluities, and pruning 
the expression, so as to exhibit neither more nor 
less, than an exact copy of the person's idea who 
uses it." 

If Lindley Murray had borne in mind his own 
definition of "precision", he would have struck 
out of his sentence the words printed in italics ; 
for, what is meant by "retrenching superfluities", 
but "pruning the expression" ? and what is con- 
veyed in the words "neither more nor less", that 
is not conveyed in the word " exact" ? But worse 
than all, is the expression, — "the person's idea 
who" I After that, the reader will be prepared 
for the assertion that almost every kind of fault 
in composition may be found in Lindley Murray's 
own writings ; and yet, I affirm, he is not more 
inaccurate in his language, than are ninety-nine 
men out of every hundred. He knew what was , 
correct in the use of words, and effected much 
good in his day, but his practice was strangely 
at variance with his precepts. 



SECOND PART. 



CRITICISMS, 
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN AMERICA, 

ON 

THE HON. GEORGE P. MARSH'S STRICTURES. 



BAD ENGLISH EXPOSED. 



CEITICISM VI. 

THE HOK GEOEGE P. MAESH. 

The Hon. George P. Marsh is contributing to 
' The Nation ' a series of articles on the new 
edition of ' Webster's Dictionary 9 ; and the editor 
of that periodical says, in a brief notice intro- 
ducing the first of the series;— " We believe that 
" they will be found the most valuable and enter - 
' ' taining criticism which that work has yet elicited, 
" and we commend them especially for perusal 
" and preservation to the scholars and the whole 
" corps of instructors of the country.' ' 

Knowing that Mr. Marsh's criticisms are de- 
serving of attentive perusal, and that his opinions 
will be received with deference by the most emi- 
nent philologists in Europe as well as in America, 
I write, in the interests of literature, to request 

E 



50 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G-. P. Marsh. 

that you will allow me, through the medium of 
' The Round Table \ firstly, to call attention 
to those valuable criticisms themselves, and, 
secondly and chiefly, to offer a word of caution 
to young students against allowing themselves 
to be tempted to adopt certain inaccuracies and 
inelegancies which are discernible in Mr. Marsh's 
sentences. 

No person can doubt that Mr. Marsh is tho- 
roughly conversant with the structure of the 
English language, and that his errors in compo- 
sition are simply the result of carelessness. But, 
as many persons are apt to be misled by the 
errors of great writers; and, as teachers even may 
be inclined to defend those errors, on the ground 
that the usage of our great writers is the only 
standard of correctness in the language, it is 
necessary to point out, that it is their usage in 
their most highly-finished compositions only, 
which can safely be accepted as the standard; 
and that we ought not to regard any work as 
faultless because of its bearing the signature of a 
great name, for " even old Homer sometimes nods." 

The Hon. George P. Marsh, will not, I am 
sure, take offence when no offence is intended; 
and he is too true a scholar to object to criticisms 



Hon.G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 51 

on his own writings if, by means of those criti- 
cisms, any information can be imparted to youth- 
ful literary aspirants who are zealously pursuing 
those studies in which he has so honourably dis- 
tinguished himself. He will readily admit that 
essays " on the character, composition, and 
" sources of the English language " ought to be 
written with such care, that the purity and 
lucidity of the expressions employed shall inclose, 
as in crystal, the living thoughts of the author's 
mind ; and if, in Mr. Marsh's essays, I point out 
here an obscuration of the meaning by the use 
of an inapt word, there a phrase rendered un- 
grammatical by the employment of an improper 
ellipsis, elsewhere an inverted clause causing a 
partial confusion of the thought, etc., etc., he 
will not, like a certain writer of less eminence 
who could not afford to acknowledge an error, set 
up a defence which his better judgment condemns; 
and, by palliating an inaccuracy because it is his 
own, inflict a lasting injury on a language spoken 
by nearly one hundred millions of the human race. 
Mr. Marsh begins his first essay thus : — 

" I propose to contribute to 'The Nation 9 , in the form 
" indicated by the above heading [' Notes on the 
" ' New Edition of Webster 9 s Dictionary '], a series 

E 2 



52 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

" of miscellaneous observations on the character, 
" composition, and sources of the English Ian- 
" guage." 

There is, in this passage, an error of very com- 
mon ocurrence. We hear it in conversation, 
we meet with it in books and in periodicals, and 
it is a particular favourite with English clergy- 
men ; one of whom recently began a sermon 
by saying; — "I propose to make a few observa- 
" tions on the character of the prophet Elijah." 
I can imagine the astonishment that would have 
been depicted in the speaker's countenance if one 
of his congregation had risen and said ;— " I object 
" to that proposal/' The clergyman, recovering 
from his surprise, would, very probably, have ex- 
cxclaimedwith indignation; — " Sir, this is neither 
" the time nor the place for discussion. I will 
" hear you in the vestry when this service is 
" concluded. I did not make any proposal what- 
" ever. I stated simply that it was my intention 
" to make a few observations on the character of 
" the prophet Elijah." That, no doubt, was 
what he intended to do ; but certainly it was not 
what he did. His words were the proclamation 
of a proposal : — " I propose " ; he wished them to 
be the announcement of an intention, and should, 



Hon. G, P. Marsh. J BAD ENGLISH. 53 

therefore, have said ; — " I purpose ". Mr. Marsh, 
in like manner, was not making a proposal to 
his readers ; he was informing them of a course 
which he intended to pursue. 

A second error in Mr. Marsh's sentence is his 
use of the adverb " above ", as an adjective. He 
says; — "the above heading". This mode of 
expression has the sanction of many of our 
best writers; but it cannot be defended on 
grammatical grounds. Though what we could 
advantageously substitute for the similarily 
constructed expressions, "wp-train", and " doivn- 
train ", I do not know. 

With regard to the word "propose" : — 
Dr. Crombie says; — "When usage is divided, as 
"to any particular words or phrases, and when 
" one of the expressions is susceptible of a differ- 
ent meaning, while the other admits only cne 
" signification, the expression which is strictly 
" univocal should be preferred. To purpose, for 
"''to intend', is better than to propose, which 
" signifies also 'to lay before', or 'submit to con- 
" ' sideration'; and 'proposal,' for a thing offered 
"or 'proposed', is better than 'proposition", 
"which denotes also 'a position', or 'the affirm- 
" ' at ion of any principle or maxim.' Thus we 



54 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh, 

"say, 'he demonstrated Euclid's proposition', 

" and ' he rejected the proposal of his friend.' " — 

' Treatise on Etymology and Syntax', p. 324. 

Mr. Marsh continues his essay thus : — 

" I select this dictionary as a basis for my remarks, 
" because its wide circulation has made it acces- 
" sible to all, and because* as it stands in this 
"edition, its vocabulary is more copious, its 
"etymologies more sound and satisfactory, and 
" its definitions more accurate than those of any 
" other English dictionary known to me." 

The structure of this sentence appears to me to 
be very faulty. Mark what is said in it concerning 
the dictionary: — "Its vocabulary is more copious, 
"its etymologies more sound and satisfactory, 
" and its definitions more accurate ". The reader 
will perceive that there is here but one verb — the 
verb "is v ; and, as that governs the whole of 
the clause, we really are told that the etymologies 
is more sound, and the definitions is more accu- 
rate ! Grammatical correctness requires that the 
clause should run thus: — "Its vocabulary is more 
" copious, its etymologies are more sound and 
" satisfactory, and its definitions more accurate". 
But the errors in this sentence do not end here, 
for, the passage is thus continued : — " than those 
" of any other English dictionary known to me " ; 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 55 

that is, " its definitions are more accurate than 
" those of any other English dictionary known to 
"me"; its " etymologies are more sound and 
" satisfactory than those of any other English 
"dictionary known to me" ; and (here is the 
error) "its vocabulary is more copious than those 
" of any other English dictionary known to me" 
Are there, then, some dictionaries having more 
than one vocabulary? The fact is, that Mr. 
Marsh has created difficulties for himself by 
attempting, in one general expression, to draw 
comparisons concerning certain nouns, two of 
which are in the plural, while the other, unfor- 
tunately, is in the singular. The way to sur- 
mount the difficulty is to put all the nouns in 
the plural. This may be done by saying; — " In 
" this edition the words of the vocabulary are 
" more numerous, the etymologies more sound 
" and satisfactory, and the definitions more accu- 
" rate than those of any other English dictionary 
"known to me." The expression "as it stands" 
is redundant, and should, therefore, be struck out. 
The next sentence in the essay is : — 

" In all these respects the work is a great improve- 
"ment upon previous issues of that long familiar 
"to the literary world under the same name.'* 



56 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

Here is a fault not of grammar, but of compo- 
sition; one against which we should be most 
carefully on our guard, because it confuses the 
reader's mind respecting the thought intended 
to be expressed. Mr. Marsh has connected, by 
position, words which are disconnected in mean- 
ing : — " the literary world under the same name" 
The sentence should have been written thus : — 
" In all these respects the work is a great im- 
" provement upon previous issues of that which, 
" under the same name, has long been familiar 
" to the literary world." 

In the next sentence but one, Mr. Marsh 
speaks of 

" a historian ". 

It is generally admitted that, when, in a word 
beginning with "h 9 \ the accent falls on the second 
syllable, the aspiration of the "A" is so much 
suppressed, that the word takes " an", instead of 
" a ", before it. Thus, we say ; — 

a history, but an historian ; 

a hero, „ but an heroic action ; 

a heretic, but an heretical opinion ; 

a habit, but an habitual drunkard ; 

a harmony, but an harmonious sound ; 

a herald, but an heraldic device ; 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 57 

a heptagon, but an heptagonal figure ; 

a hexagon, but an hexagonal figure ; 

a hydra, but an hydraulic press ; 

a hypocrite, but an hypocrisy ; 

a hyperbolical expression, ... but an hyperbole; 
a hypothetical position, but an hypothesis. 

We say, also, an harangue, an hiatus, an hilarity, 
an horizon, an hyena, an hysterical person. The 
change of accent, from the first syllable to the 
second, neutralizes the aspiration of the "h". 
But before the words "humane", "humidity", and 
"humility" we do not use "an" but " a ", be- 
cause, although the accent is on the second 
syllable, and, consequently, the " h " is not 
sounded, we still have the sound of "u long", 
and therefore say; — "a humane man," "a 
" humidity," " a humility " ; just as we say; — " a 
" united family", " a unanimous decision ", etc. 
So, also, before the words "humour", and 
"humourist" \ we use "a"; not because those 
words begin with "h", for the " h" is mute; 
but because the "u", which immediately follows 
the " h ", has the sound of the consonant " y". 



58 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 



CEITICISM VII. 
THE HOIST. GEOEGE P. MAKSH. 

In the line next to that in which Mr. Marsh 
speaks of " a historian", I read : — 

"When, therefore, instead of exhibiting the oral or 
" written forms of a language, which have been 
" sanctioned by the ablest speakers and authors 
" in that language, he assumes to impose new or 
" unusual forms upon the tongue or the pen of 
"those whose breath it is, he is usurping func- 
" tions which belong to a higher jurisdiction, and 
"the greater the merits of his work may be 
" otherwise, the greater is the sin of his trans- 
" gression." 

The conjunction "or" is not always used to 
contrast things which differ essentially; it is 
sometimes used where the difference is merely 
nominal; and good writers generally indicate, 
by one of the following methods, whether the 
difference is essential or nominal: — If, for the 
purpose of being more explicit in speaking of 
something, it is needful to mention it under two 
names; we then connect the names by "or" 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 59 

simply ; we do not repeat the preposition or the 
article before the second name; we say; — "He 
"went to Van Diemens Land or Tasmania"; 
and those who know the language, know that we 
are speaking of only one place, and that Tas- 
mania is another name for Van Diemen's Land. 
But if we wish to speak of two places, we repeat 
the preposition, and say; — "He came from New 
"York or from Baltimore"; or we repeat the 
article, and say; — "The tongue or the pen"; or 
we prefix the word " either " to the former of the 
two, and say ; — " Either new or unusual forms". 
In Mr. Marsh's sentence, which I have quoted at 
the beginning of this paragraph, he speaks of 
"the oral or written forms of a language"; but, 
as they are distinct and .different, he ought to 
have said; — "the oral or the written forms of a 
" language ". The repetition of the article -is just 
as necessary in this place, as it is in that other 
part of the sentence, where Mr. Marsh says ; — 
"the tongue or the pen". But there is an error 
of the same sort between these two quotations. 
Mr. Marsh says; — "When . . he assumes to impose 
" new or unusual forms upon the tongue or the 
"pen": he should have said; — "either new or 
" unusual forms "; for, an unusual form is not 



60 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

necessarily a new form. In confirmation of this 
opinion on the conjunction "or", see Dr. Camp- 
bell's 'Philosophy of Rhetoric', Vol.ii, page 49. A 
third error in the sentence consists of an im- 
proper change in the mood of the verb. Mr. Marsh 
says ; — "The greater the merits of his work may 
" be otherwise, the greater is the sin of his trans- 
gression." This should have been; — "The 
"greater the merits of his work are otherwise, 
"the greater is the sin of his transgression"; 
or, better still; — "The greater the merits which 
" his work has otherwise, the greater is the sin of 
"his transgression." 
Mr. Marsh's ' Notes ' are thus continued : — 

" In justice it should be added that where the Web- 
" sterian orthography differs from that generally 
"regarded as normal in England., the latter is 
" given in brackets and small italics, in the pre- 
" sent edition. This is an improvement, certainly, 
"but it would have been much better and fairer 
"to put the spelling adopted by the highest 
" living and recent authorities at least upon an 
" equal footing with that which the editors pro- 
"pose to substitute for it, by assigning to it as 
"conspicuous a place and letter as to the new 
" orthography." 

In this passage Mr. Marsh did not, I believe, 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 61 

mean to speak of a certain orthography " re- 
" garded as normal in England ", but of a certain 
orthography regarded in England as normal. In 
the latter part of the sentence Mr. Marsh falls 
into a similar error, and tells us something which 
is directly opposed to that which he wished to 
express. He says;— "It would have been much 
"better and fairer to put the spelling adopted 
"by the highest living and recent authorities at 
" least upon an equal footing with that which the 
"editors propose to substitute for it, by assigning 
" to it as conspicuous a place and letter as to the 
" new orthography, " We are told that the editors 
of ' Webster s Dictionary' propose to substitute one 
mode of spelling for an other, by giving to each an 
equally conspicuous place and letter ! I venture 
to suggest that Mr. Marsh's meaning would have 
been more clearly expressed by the following 
briefer form of words : — " This is an im- 
provement, certainly; but it would have been 
"much better and fairer to put both upon an 
" equal footing, by assigning to the spelling 
" adopted by the highest living and recent au- 
thorities, a place and letter as conspicuous as 
" those which are assigned to the new orthography." 
Nothing is unimportant in literary composi- 



62 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh 

tion. As, in chess, the result of a game is fre- 
quently determined by the position of a pawn, 
so, in a sentence, a writer's meaning is frequently 
determined by the position of a comma. In Mr. 
Marsh's next sentence there should be a comma 
after the word "language"; and then we should 
not read of — ■ 

" A word-book of a living language not extending 
" beyond a single volume." 

Passing over the next sentence, I read as 
follows : — 

" That which has been accomplished for some lan- 
" guages, and which is in process of accomplish- 
" ment for several others — namely, a complete 
" historical and expository lexicon of the speech 
" — so far from having been effected for the 
" English language by Webster and his improvers, 
" was not even attempted by them, nor, though 
" Johnson and Richardson, not to mention some 
"older and less famous laborers in the same 
" field, had large and liberal ideas upon the 
" possibilities of lexicography, has it ever been 
" seriously undertaken until it was commenced, 
" within the last ten years, by the London Philo- 
" logical Society.'* 

In the first place, can we correctly speak of a 
lexicon as being "in process of accomplishment"? 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 63 

Ought we not rather to speak of the writing of such 
a work as being in process of accomplishment ? 
To accomplish is to complete, to fill up ; and as 
a lexicon cannot be said to exist until it is com- 
pleted, it appears to me that we can no more 
speak of a lexicon as being in process of accom- 
plishment, than we can speak of anything that is 
completed, as being in process of completion. 
Towards the end of the sentence, Mr. Marsh 
says; — "nor has it ever been seriously under- 
" taken until it was commenced, within the last 
"ten years, by the London Philological Society." 
Why this change in the tense of the verbs ? It 
surely cannot be justified. Mr. Marsh should have 
said; — "nor had it ever been seriously under- 
taken until it was commenced, within the last 
"ten years, by the London Philological Society." 
One of the most frequently recurring errors in 
Mr. Marsh's ' Notes ' is the improper omission of 
the article after the disjunctive conjunction "07°". 
I have given one or two instances of this ; here 
is an other, which differs from those previously 
noticed, in that it has an adjective before the 
first noun; and therefore, as the article is not 
repeated after the " or", the construction of the 
sentence requires that we accept the adjective as 



64 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G P. Marsh. 

applying to the second noun as well as to the 
first. Mr. Marsh speaks of — 

" The revolutions of language which have thrown out 
"of use and into oblivion a vast multitude of 
" terms familiar, in different ages, to our litera- 
" ture and our daily speech, sometimes supplying 
" their places by new vocables, sometimes burying 
" them with the dead objects or ideas they stood 
" for." 

If Mr. Marsh did not mean to speak of dead 
ideas as well as of "dead objects", he should have 
said — " sometimes burying them with the dead 
"objects or with the ideas they stood for" ; or, 
" for which they stood." 



Hon. a. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH, 65 



CEITICISM VIII. 

THE HOK GEORGE P. MARSH. 

I kejoice that my letters have called forth hostile 
criticism ; because now, haply, we shall be able 
to blend amusement with instruction; and> by 
good-humouredly laughing at the faults which 
each writer commits, shall induce the public to 
join in our mirth, and to take an interest in a 
study which hitherto, perhaps, they have regarded 
as intolerably dull. 

There is, in a recent number of ' The Nation ' a 
letter dated from Trinity College and signed "S." 
It purports to be a review of ( Moon's English 1 . I 
am always thankful for the criticisms of any one 
who shows, by his mastery over language, that his 
critical opinions are deserving of respect. But 
when a would-be critic of my language, is unable 
to see the faults in his own, I smile at the ex- 
pression of his benevolent intentions ; and, while 
thanking him very cordially for his proffered 
services, decline to place myself under his 
tuition. 



66 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

The second sentence in the letter of my colle- 
giate friend is as follows : — 

"Mr. Marsh is, of course, quite able to carry on a 
"contest with Mr. Moon triumphantly, if he 
"would be at the trouble to do it, and certainly 
"does not need to call for any assistance." 

An elegant writer would have said ; — " trium- 
"phantly to carry on a contest with Mr. Moon", 
and not, " to carry on a contest with Mr. Moon 
"triumphantly". Besides, how can Mr. Marsh's 
ability to carry on a contest be dependent on 
his will ? Mr. S. says that Mr. Marsh is " able 
" ... if he would ", etc. But that is not all ; 
for, Mr. S. adds, " and certainly does not need to 
" call for any assistance." That is, Mr. Marsh 
is able " if he would be at the trouble to do it, 
"and [if he] certainly does not need to call for 
" any assistance." Mr. S. ought to have said; — 
" and he certainly does not need to call for 
" any assistance." But,as the sentence stands, 
we are told that Mr. Marsh's ability to carry on 
a contest with Mr. Moon triumphantly, is 
dependent on the possession of two things : the 
will to be at the trouble, and the certainty of his 
not needing to call for any assistance. Should 
he fail in either of these matters, his triumph 



Hon. G. P, Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 67 

would, in the judgment of Mr. S., be doubtful ! 
Well, after all, Mr. S. may be right; for, cer- 
tainly, if Mr. Marsh needed his assistance, the 
case would indeed be a hopeless one. 

I will examine the composition of another 
sentence of Mr. S.'s, and then proceed to investi- 
gate some of his critical opinions. In the same 
paragraph as that from which I just now quoted, 
I read :— 

"Perhaps his [Mr. Moon's] carelessness is due to the 
"fact that he is writing for Americans, of whose 
" ability to speak or write the English correctly 
" he has, at times, been hardly able to conceal his 
" doubts." 

I am constrained to protest, here, against the 
injustice of this remark. I have, on every occa- 
sion, stood up in defence of the Americans ; and 
those who know me and have read ' The Dean's 
' English ', can bear witness to the truth of this 
assertion. It is the Dean of Canterbury who has 
maligned the people whose first President's name I 
am proud to bear. This is by way of parenthesis. 
Now let us examine the structure of the sentence. 
" To speak or write " should be, " to speak or to 
" write " ; the actions are different, therefore the 
preposition should be repeated after the disjunc- 

f 2 



68 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

tive conjunction "or"; and then, "to speak or 
"write the English" should, unquestionably, be 
"to speak or to write English". "English" 
means the language ; "the English" means the 
people. We can no more speak " the English", 
than we can speak " the Americans ". 

Mr. S. objects to the word cotemporaries ". 
I really do not know how that word came to be 
printed in my letter in i The Round Table \ I 
am certain that in the manuscript which I sent 
to America I did not say ;— 

''the pages of one of your cotemporaries "; 

I said ; — " the pages of ' The Nation ' ". As for 
the word " ^temporaries ", which Mr. S. hopes 
may not take root, and which, he says, Dr. 
Bentley called "a down-right barbarism", Dr, 
Ogilvie, one of our best lexicographers, says, in 
his dictionary;-— 

"Contemporary, see Cotemporary, the prefer- 
"able word." 
Mr. S. appears to think that 

"The general use in words compounded with the 
"inseparable preposition con is to retain the n 
" before a consonant and to expunge it before a 
" vowel or an h mute/' 



Hon. G. P. Marsh. ] BA D ENGLISH. 69 

Indeed ? How happens it, then, that we say ; — 
co-bishop, co-herald, co-guardian, co-partner, 
co-worker, co-surety, co-defendent, co-lessee, co- 
trustee, co-tenant, co-regent, etc., etc. ? Why do 
we say cohabit, and not co?ihabit ? Why do we 
say covet, and not convet ? Why do we say co- 
venant, and not convenant ? The first syllable 
of each of these words is from the Latin con, 
and the second syllable begins with a consonant. 
If Mr. S. should ever be on a jury, he would, 
doubtless, make his co-jurors conjurors; and 
were he speaking of the co-founders of the great 
American Republic, he would call them con- 
founders ! 

Mr. S. objects also to my use of the word 

«f<mlV\ 

as applied to grammar and to composition, 
and would substitute the word "error"; as- 
signing as his reason, that " error respects the 
" act, fault respects the agent.' 9 I suppose, then, 
that geologists ought not to call a dislocation of 
part of the earth's crust "a fault", but " an 
"error"! Will Mr. S. have the goodness to 
suggest the alteration to his geological friends ? 



70 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

He condemns my use of the preposition "of" 
in the phrase, 

" not a fault of grammar, but of composition ", 

and would substitute in for of. But " a fault of 
"composition" is one thing; and "a fault in 
" composition " may be quite an other thing. Of 
relates to source, whereas in relates to place. A 
fault of composition must, of course, be a fault 
in composition; but a fault in composition is 
not, necessarily, a fault of composition. It may 
be a fault of grammar. Mr. S. seems to know of 
only one meaning to the word " of"> namely, that 
of possession; for he asks;— "Whose "error 
"of composition was it? Was it the compo- 
sition's error?" This is worse than childish. 
Does Mr. S. really believe that " the fear of the 
"Lord" means that there is a feeling of fear in 
the mind of the Almighty? Is this what is 
taught at Trinity College ? fie ! 

With similar short-sightedness Mr. S. stumbles 
over the very obvious meaning of the same pre- 
position, as it is used in the expression, 

" the signature of a great name." 

Of has at least a dozen significations ; and, in 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 71 

the foregoing expression, I have used it in the 
sense of consisti?ig of. 

Mr. S. would substitute "scholar" for "name". 
I do not see any necessity for the change. My 
expression is sanctioned by the example of the 
author of i The Grammar of English Grammars \ 
who says, on page 36; — "It was not supposed 
"that any reader would demand for every thing 
" of this kind the authority of some great name." 

Mr. S. objects likewise to the expression, 

"too true a scholar", 

and says; — "Hobbs and Whately declare that 
" only assertions can be true or false." In the 
first place, Mr. S. has mistaken the meaning of 
the word "true", as used here. I do not speak 
of Mr. Marsh's veracity ; but, of his faithfulness. 
Has Mr. S. never met with that meaning of the 
word? Has he never read in the history of 
Joseph; — "We are all one man's sons; we are 
" true men ; thy servants are no spies " ? Has Mr. 
S. never heard of the " true God" ? I commend 
to Mr. S., for his attentive perusal, an old- 
fashioned book called " The Bible ". 

Mr. S. has, evidently, no keenness of percep- 
tion of the niceties of meaning conveyed in 



72 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

terms which appear to be nearly synonymous. 
I had spoken of my wish 

fic to offer a word of caution to young students against 
" allowing themselves to he tempted to adopt certain 
"inaccuracies ", 

and Mr. S. very innocently says; — "Does he 
"mean anything more than to offer a word of 
" caution to young students against adopting cer- 
tain inaccuracies ? " Certainly I do. I mean 
very much more. Does Mr. S. not know 
the meaning of even the word "temptation "? 
Or would he wish me to take the opposite view 
of the matter, and infer that, in his experience, 
to be tempted, and to yield to the temptation, 
are one and the same thing ? 
I am aware that 

"purpose" and "propose " 

are derived from the same Latin word ; but, like 
many other words which come from one common 
root, they differ in signification, and differ far 
more than do the kindred words, "proposal " and 
"proposition ". Of these Mr. S, says ; — " A pro- 
"position, when acceded to, is followed by an act 
" on the part of those to whom it is submitted. A 
"proposal, when accepted, is followed by an act 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 73 

" on the part of the proposer". I do not know 
whether Mr. S. rejoices in a state of single bles- 
sedness or not ; but if he does, and if he should 
one day be " tempted ", by a pair of bright eyes, to 
make a proposal of marriage ; I hope that he will 
experience that his proposal is followed by a very 
loving act on the part of the fair one ; and that he 
will live to find that, not only an assertion, but 
also a woman, can be true. 



74 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G P. Marsh. 



CEITICISM IX. 
THE HON. GEOEGE P. MAESH. 

There are many persons to whom the study of 
language is distasteful ; and who, consequently, 
have refused to acquaint themselves with the 
properties of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. ; 
but who, nevertheless, from a constant perusal 
of our best authors, write and speak with com- 
parative purity. Occasionally, however, they 
are asked to decide respecting some disputed 
point in grammar, and to give a reason for their 
decision ; and they then, having no substantial 
foundation of linguistic knowledge on which to 
base an opinion, are obliged to confess their 
ignorance of the laws of the language ; and so, 
from the proud position of umpires, to which 
their imagined mastery of those laws had raised 
them in the estimation of their fellow-men, they 
fall at once to the humiliating position of those 
who are wilfully ignorant. There are other per- 
sons who have, for years, made language their 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 75 

study ; and who know the use of every " part of 
"speech", and can quote every rule of syntax; 
and yet, either from a want of keenness of per- 
ception, or of a proper sense of order in the 
arrangement of their thoughts, are unable to 
express their meaning with clearness and accu- 
racy : and, from this cause, it comes to pass that 
the most obvious of all grammatical rules — that 
which refers to position — is the one which is 
most frequently violated. 

It is possible to construct a sentence in which 
every word shall be wrong, and yet the meaning 
be manifest ; it is also possible to construct a 
sentence in which every word shall be correct, 
and yet the meaning be obscure ; and however 
much we may shrink from such vulgarisms as 

" them's them ", 

we must admit that, since the object of all 
speech is the clear expression of our thoughts, 
he who, in the language he employs, is gram-' 
matically wrong but does not offend against 
perspicuity, is less culpable than he who, 
having received a certain amount of education, 
leaves the hearer, or the reader, in doubt as to 
the meaning intended to be conveyed. In the 



76 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

phrase " them's them", each of the three words 
is wrong. You cannot say, — "them is"; nor 
can you say, — " them are" ; neither can you 
say, — " are them 9 '. You cannot say the first, be- 
cause the verb " is" does not agree here with 
that which governs it; you cannot say the 
second, because "them" is accusative, and the 
verb requires a nominative ; and you cannot say 
the last, because the verb "to he " should have 
the same case after it as it has before it ; there- 
fore if the first "them" is incorrect, so is the 
last ; and thus we see that every word is incor- 
rect. 

Still, no person could be in doubt as to the 
speaker's meaning ; but when Mr. Marsh tells 
us that there is 

" another difficulty in the way of all attempts to fix 
" the force of words belonging to the vocabulary 
" of our moral and intellectual nature by descrip- 
tion", 

we are obliged to pause for a moment, to consider 
whether we rightly understand what is said; 
and it is not until we are satisfied that Mr. 
Marsh does not mean ; — " belonging to the 
" vocabulary of our moral and intellectual nature 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 77 

" by description ", that we perceive the last 
two words to be misplaced, and that he 
means, that there is " another difficulty in 
" the way of all attempts to fix by description 
" the force of words belonging to the vocabulary 
" of our moral and intellectual nature." 

In the passage preceding the one which I have 
just quoted, Mr. Marsh uses a verb in the sin- 
gular, when speaking of nouns in the plural ; 
and, in a passage subsequent to it, he uses a 
verb in the plural, when speaking of a noun in 
the singular. The former of these passages is 
as follows :— 

" Language rises above even organization* for it is 
" animated not only by a vital but by a con- 
" trolling spiritual element, and its signification 
" is as varied as [is'] the passions, the affections, 
" and the conceptions of the soul which inspires 

«it." 

Of course it should be ;-— " its significance is 
" as varied as are the passions, etc." The other- 
passage is : — ■ 

" These operations and affections are often but dimly 
" conscious even to ourselves, and the words by 
" which we indicate them are necessarily as inca- 
" pable of analysis as [are] the thing signified." 



78 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

This should be; — "the words by which we indi- 
cate them are necessarily as incapable of analysis 
" as is the thing signified." But in the begin- 
ning also of the sentence there is an error which 
should not pass without comment. Mr. Marsh 
says ; — These operations and affections are often 
" but dimly conscious even to ourselves". This 
is a very strange clause for so eminent a 
philologist as Mr. Marsh to write. How can 
" operations and affections " be " conscious " ? 
And if conscious, how can they be conscious 
" to "f We may speak of ourselves as being con- 
scious of certain operations and affections : or we 
may speak of certain "operations and affections" 
as being perceptible to us ; but we cannot speak of 
their being conscious to us. Probably Mr. Marsh 
meant to say, either ; — " These operations and 
" affections are often but dimly perceptible even 
"to ourselves"; or, " of these operations and 
" affections we, ourselves, are often but dimly 
" conscious." 

Can either the relative pronoun "who", or its 
possessive, "whose", correctly be employed con- 
cerning inanimate objects ? I think not. Of 
the relative pronouns, "who" and "whose" apply 
either to persons, or to things personified; 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 79 

" which" applies to irrational animals, to inani- 
mate objects, and sometimes to infants ; and 
"that" is used to prevent too frequent a repe- 
tition of "who" and of "ivhich", and applies 
equally to persons, to animals, and to things. 
Such is our modern usage ; and to it we ought to 
conform. I am aware that, in olden time, it was 
the custom to use "which" when speaking of 
persons; hence the phrase ; — " Our Father which 
" art in heaven". It was likewise the custom to 
say " whose ", when speaking of things ; hence, 
in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, we read : — 

" Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree ivliose mortal taste ". 

But now, the best writers, when speaking of inani- 
mate objects, use "of which" instead of "whose" ; 
and I am surprised to find Mr. Marsh saying ; — 

" How can we define that whose being, whose action, 
" whose conditions, whose limitations we cannot 
" comprehend ? " 

Would it not have been better to say; — " How 
" can we define that, of which we cannot compre- 
" hend the being, the action, the conditions, the 
"limitations?"? 
I know of no word in the English language 



80 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

that is treated more as a drudge than is the 
little word " same ". It is laid under tribute for 
all kinds of work, and has to do duty upon all 
sorts of occasions. It is found in penal enact- 
ments ; and, respecting the law, trespassers are 
told what they will incur if they violate " the 
" same". Young ladies, too, whose letters begin 
with "Dearest", and end with some message of 
love, usually request their friends to accept " the 
" same" themselves. If a costermonger loses his 
donkey, or if an old maid loses her fan, you are, 
in each case, equally sure to read in the advertise- 
ment that a reward will be paid for the recovery 
of " the same". But, hard as it is to have to do 
the work of other persons, it is still harder to have 
to do work that is utterly useless ; and the little 
word " same " is frequently dragged in to do even 
that. Of what use is the word in the following 
sentence of Mr. Marsh's ?— 

" The higher the culture of a people, the larger will 
" be the proportion of indefinable words in its 
" [?. their'] language, and the signification of this 
" class of its words can be mastered only by the 
"same process by which the infant learns the 
" meaning of the vocabulary of the nursery, ob- 
" servation, namely, of actual living usage." 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 81 

Strike out from this passage the word " same ", 
and what is lost, either in fulness of meaning or 
in euphony of language ? Nothing. Nevertheless, 
if a writer wishes to emphasize the statement that 
it is by the same process, let him say; — "by the 
" same process as that by which the infant "; etc. 
One more word respecting this sentence"; — the last 
clause is dualistic ; and, as the one part is expla- 
natory of the other, nothing could be easier 
than to arrange the words in their simple 
and proper order ; the pivot word being, the 
adverb " namely 9 '. But, in Mr. Marsh's sentence, 
that word is misplaced ; and, as a natural con- 
sequence, his collocation of the words makes 
them grate on the ear. How much better it 
would have been to speak of mastering the diffi- 
culties " by the same process as that by which 
" the infant learns the meaning of the vocabulary 
" of the nursery, namely, observation of actual 
" living usage." 

I close this letter by adding a few words on 
the expression 

*Demesb 9 \ 

of which I have just spoken. A gentleman once 



82 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

began a letter thus, to his bride : — " My dearest 
" Maria "• The lady replied :— "My dear John, I 
"beg that you will mend either your morals 
"or your grammar. You call me your ' dearest 
"'Maria'; am I to understand that you have 
"other Marias?" 

It is said that, ever afterwards, John very 
properly addressed her as " Maria, my dearest". 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. S3 



CEITICISM X. 

THE HOIST. GEOEGE P. MAESH. 

I finished the first criticism in this series by 
commenting on Mr. Marsh's expression, — "a his- 
" torian". Much more might have been said on 
the proper use of the article 

" a " or " cm ", 

but I feared that, if I extended my remarks on 
that subject, I should weary the readers of - The 
6 Bound Table ', and incur the charge of prolixity. 
However, as, in the last number which I have 
received of that journal, a correspondent at 
Washington asks for information concerning 
those important little words, I gladly resume 
my remarks on them ; for, as I said, my purpose 
in writing these criticisms is not to expose Mr. 
Marsh's errors, but to base upon those errors 
such teaching as may be useful to students of 
the English language. 

Lindley Murray and many other grammarians 
tell us that "a" becomes "an" before a vowel 
and before a silent "ft"; but, what is really the 

g 2 



84 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

fact, is the converse of that. " An " becomes " a" 
before a consonant sound ; for, " an " is the origi- 
nal word, and was formerly used both before 
consonants and before vowels, and was not abbre- 
viated to " a " until long after the Conquest. Dr. 
Webster says that in 6 Saxon Chronicles \ page 82, 
we read ; — " And thses geares waerun ofslegne IX 
"eorlas and an cyning " ; i.e.; — And this year 
were slain nine earls and one king. But though 
the primary signification of " a " and of " an " is 
" one '*, Dr. Webster, in whose praise Mr. Marsh 
is writing, is certainly in error when he says, 
( ( Improved Grammar", page 13) ; — " The definitive 
" ' an ' or ' a ' is merely ' one \ in its English or- 
thography, and is precisely synonymous with 
" it ". There is an obvious difference between 
the two words* We use " one " when we speak 
numerically, and wish to signify that there are 
not more than one; whereas we use either "a" 
or "an" when we wish to emphasize, not the 
number, but, the description of the thing spoken 
of. For example, were we to ask ; — " Is chess a | 
" game for one boy ? '* the very natural and pro- 1 
per answer would be ;— " No j it is to be played by 
" two." But were our question to be ; — " Is chess 
"a game for a boy ?"th& answer would be; — 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 85 

"Yes; or for a girl." In this respect our lan- 
guage has a decided superiority over other lan- 
guages; in them, one word performs the office 
both of what grammarians term an article, and of 
a numeral. In French, for instance, Donnez moi 
un livre means either; — Give me one book; i.e., 
not two or more ; or it means ; — Give me a book, 
not something else. In Latin, likewise ; — "films 
" regis" may mean; — "A son of a king", "A son of 
"the king", " The son of a king", or " The son 
"of the king"; and if we wish to explain, in 
English, which of these four senses the expres- 
sion is intended to convey, we have to employ 
several additional words. It is a curious fact, 
mentioned in a recent number of ' The Athe- 
'nceum', that we English alone of all nations, 
ancient or modern, have a bond fide article 
which is distinct from "one", though contracted 
from " one " and meaning " one". No nation but 
ourselves could use such expressions as ;- — " Give 
"me half a one", "Not such a one as that", 
" Give me a ripe one ". That "a" is not synony- 
mous with "one", is evident from our not being 
able to use it interchangeably with "one". We 
may say; — " This one thing I do"; but we cannot 
say;—" This a thing I do", 



86 BAD ENGLISH. |Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

But although "a" is not synonymous with 
"one", it always implies unity; and can there- 
fore never be used but in speaking of one, or in 
speaking of many things collectively; i.e., of many 
things considered as one. We say "a one", "a 
" thousand ", " a quantity", " a number ", a multi- 
"tude". But though we say " a multitude", 
which means many, we never say "a many". 
Yet, by a strange caprice of idiom, we say 
"a great many", "a few' 9 , and "many a"; 
as : — 

" Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

Gray, 

This form is allowable in poetry ; but in prose, 
it is generally preferable to say ; — " many gems ", 
" many flowers ". 

While speaking of " a few", it is worthy of re- 
mark that the importance of the little word " a " 
is never more manifest than when it precedes 
the word "few"; for, the word "a" so qualifies it, 
that it signifies something quite different, when 
written without the " a ", from what it does when 
written with it; e.g. : — 



Hon. G, P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 87 

"Few persons really believe it ; — it is incredible." 

"A few persons really believe it ; — it is not in-' 
" credible." 

The same remark applies to " little " and " a 
"little"; e.g.:— 

"He thought little about it ; — it was a matter 
" of indifference to him." 

" He thought a little about it ; — it was not a 
" matter of indifference to him." 

When we use the words "few" and "little" 
without "&" before them, we represent that of 
which we speak, as being inconsiderable; but 
by using "a" before them, we amplify — we 
represent the thing spoken of as not being incon- 
siderable. 

There is another important use of the word 
"a" which we must notice. If we say; — "He 
"would make a better statesman than lawyer", 
we mean that he has qualities which render 
him more fitted for the senate than for the 
bar; but if we say; — " He would make a better 
" statesman than a lawyer ", we mean that he 
would make a better statesman than a lawyer 
would. 

Again, when we speak of a man as holding 
several offices at once, we put "a" before only 



88 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

the first of those offices ; as : — " a director, secre- 
tary, and treasurer." Were we to put "a" 
before each of the names, we should no longer 
be speaking of one man holding three offices, but 
of three men, each holding one office. So, like- 
wise, is it with words descriptive of qualities; 
e.g. : — "A long and dusty road " is a road which is 
both long and dusty; but, "A long and a dusty 
"road" means two roads; of which one is long, 
and the other dusty. However, when the things 
spoken of are obviously two or more, there is not 
the same necessity for repeating the article before 
each one. 

The article " a " has several meanings. Some- 
times it means "each"; as: — "The high priest 
" shall make an atonement for the children of 
"Israel, for all their sins, once a year", i.e., 
once each year. Sometimes it means "any"; as:— 
"If a man love me, he will keep my words" ; 
i.e., iiany man. Sometimes it means "one in par- 
ticular ; as :— " He sent a man before them, even 
" Joseph." Sometimes it means "every" ; as: — 
"It is good that a man should both hope and 
" quietly wait for the 'salvation of the Lord"; 
i.e., every man. 

Sometimes "a" is used before the name of a 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 89 

person; as : — " He is a Smith " ; meaning he is of 
the family of the Smiths. Here, in written lan- 
guage, the capital letter at the beginning of the 
name shows it to be that of a person, and not of 
a trade. But in spoken language the distinction 
cannot be so easily made ; therefore, in conver- 
sation, that form of expression should be avoided; 
for if, in answer to my inquiry, — " Who is that ? " 
I am told; — "He is a Smith", I am doubtful 
whether my informant is speaking of the person's 
family, or of his occupation ; and if the name 
should happen to be that of an animal ; as, for 
instance, — "Bull", or " Fox "; — it would be parti- 
cularly offensive to say; — " He is a Bull", or "He 
" is a Fox " ; for — though, of course, the hearer 
would not understand the. person to be a quad- 
ruped — the words might be understood to mean 
that he is ferocious or is cunning. The proper 
expression would be; — "He is a Mr. Smith", or, 
" a Mr. Fox." 

But "a" is very properly used before the 
name of a person whose extraordinary qualities 
have made his name proverbial for that in which 
he excelled. For example, we say; — "He is a 
" Samson", meaning, he possesses almost super- 
human strength; — "He is a Nero'', meaning, a 



90 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

tyrant ; — " He is a Howard ", meaning, a philan- 
thropist ; — " He is a Washington ", or " He is a 
" Cincinnatus ", meaning, a patriot. 

There is a misuse of the article " a ", which 
is very common :— the employing it before the 
word "most". The words are incongruous; 
"a" means one of several which are supposed to 
be equal in certain respects; whereas, "most" is 
indicative of that which is above all. 

" An" should always be used when the follow- 
ing word begins with the unaspirated "h", or 
with any of the vowels, except 

1st, "u" when long, as if preceded by the letter 
«y'\e.g.:— 

we say ; — a U, a Unitarian, a usurer, a usurious 
rate of interest, a usurper, a use, a unicorn, a 
Utopian theory, a unit, a union, a uniform, a 
university, a united family, a unanimous decision, 
a unanimity, a utilitarian, a upas tree, etc. 

2nd, "eu" having the sound of " u" long ; e.g.: — 
we say; — a eunuch, a eulogy, a euphemism, a 
euphony, a European, etc. 

3rd, "ew" having the sound of " u" long ; e.g.: — 
we say; — a ewe, a ewer, etc. 

4th, "o" when pronounced as if preceded by 
"w" ; e.g.: — 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 91 

we say; — a one-pound note, a oneness, such a 
one, a once-beloved friend, etc. 

We use "an", likewise before consonants 
which are pronounced as if they begin with a 
vowel; e.g.: — we say an F, an L, an M, an N, 
an E, an S, an X. Many grammarians say, 
also ; — an H ; and, in naming that letter, call it 
"aitch"; although it would, clearly, be more in 
accordance with its most frequent use, to call it 
"/mitch". 



92 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

CKITICISM XL 

THE HON. GEOKGE P. MAESH. 

The Hon. George P. Marsh is singularly un- 
fortunate in having such a champion as Mr. S., 
of Trinity College, to do battle on his behalf. 
When will men learn that the maintaining a dig- 
nified silence respecting the faults of a friend, is a 
truer kindness to him, than the entering the lists 
in his defence, otherwise than fully armed for the 
overthrow of his opponent ? Mr. Marsh suffers 
nothing from my criticisms. I freely concede 
that the errors in his ' Notes ' are not those of 
ignorance, but of inadvertence. The great 
scholar has, doubtless, been more intent upon 
pointing out the derivation of words, than upon 
arranging them in their proper order in his 
sentences. But he does suffer from the offi- 
ciousness of his friends ; because the world, 
whether justly or unjustly I need not stop to 
inquire, generally associates a man, for good 
or for evil, with those who make common cause 
with him. 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 93 

Mr. S. thus writes to ' The Nation ' : — 

" Mr. Moon has written to ' The Bound Table ', ' to 
" ' base upon those errors such teaching as may be 
" ' useful to students of the English language.' 
" I do not often find writers acknowledging that 
" their teaching is based on errors. When Mr. 
" Moon, therefore, avows that it is his * purpose ' 
" thus to base his teaching, I gladly call attention 
" to his honesty." 

Would that I could return the compliment, 
and "call attention" to Mr. S.'s honesty; but, 
unfortunately, he has deprived me of the power 
of doing that, and I am reluctantly compelled to 
"call attention" to his dishonesty. He begins 
his letter by quoting a part of one of my 
sentences ; and, with an ingenuity which does him 
but little credit, he wrests out of the quotation, 
a meaning which the entire sentence would never 
convey. Mr. Marsh's advocate sacrifices his 
dignity as a scholar, and his truthfulness as a 
man, in a vain attempt to be witty. 

Mr. S.'s next sentence is as follows : — 

" And after reading his article, I am ready to admit 
"that he accomplishes his purpose. His criti- 
" cism is upon the proper use of the articles 
"[? article] "a" and" aw \" 



94 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

Upon this passage I remark that it is not 
scholarly to begin a sentence with the copulative 
conjunction " and" ; nor is it in good taste to use 
one word in two different senses in two con- 
secutive lines, as Mr. S. does when he speaks of 

"reading his article upon the proper use of 

"the article". 

But there is an other error in the sentence 
preceding that which I have just noticed. Mr. 

S. says; — "I do not often find When Mr. 

" Moon, therefore, avows ", etc. The reader will 
observe that Mr. S., by putting the adverb 
"therefore" after my name, makes my avowal 
consequent upon his not finding, etc ! He ought to 
have said; — "Therefore, when Mr. Moon avows"; 
not, — " When Mr. Moon, therefore, avows". Ad- 
verbs should be placed as near as possible to 
the words with which they are the most closely 
connected in meaning. 

Mr. S.'s letter is continued thus : — 

" He has spread over two columns of ' The Bound 
" ' Table * that which, so far as his statements are 
" correct, might have been as clearly expressed 
" in one half the space." 

As this is a comparative clause of equality, 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 95 

Mr. S. ought to have said ; — " as far as his state- 
"ments are correct". Again, Mr. S. ought not 
to have said; — "one half the space ; — but, "half 
"the space." The word "one" is redundant, 
for there are but two halves in a whole ; and, if we 
meant both, we should not use the word "half. 
Mr. S. objects to my saying; — 

" I finished the first criticism in this series by com- 
" menting ", etc. ; 

and he says of me ; — "He blunders in the 
"use of the preposition 'by 9 . ' Commenting' 
"was not the agent or instrument by which he 
"finished his criticism. He should say; 'I 
" ' finished the first criticism in this series with 
" ' a comment '," etc. In nothing is the shallow- 
ness of Mr. S.'s knowledge of English more 
apparent than in his remarks concerning prepo- 
sitions. He fails to see that the improved sentence 
not only does not convey my meaning, but that 
it is, in itself, really ambiguous. To finish "a. 
"criticism with a comment" may mean to finish 
a criticism containing a comment. But to finish 
a criticism "by commenting" is to make the 
comment the finish or end of the criticism ; and 
that was the meaning intended to be conveyed. 



96 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

" With " is one of the most ambiguous pre- 
positions in the language; e.g. : — " I killed a man 
"with a sword." This may mean, either; — "A 
"man having a sword was killed by me" ; or, — 
"I, by means of& sword, killed a man." Again, — ■ 
"He that is not with me is against me": Matt, 
xii, 30. In this passage, "with" is opposed to 
"against" ; but in the following passage it is 
identical with " against" : — " In the days of Saul 
"they made war with the Hagarites, who fell by 
"their hand": 1 Chron. v, 10. To make war 
with the Hagarites was to fight against them ; but 
when it is said, in Prov.xx, 18 ; — "with good advice 
"make war", the meaning is certainly not that 
we are to fight against good advice ! Will Mr. S. 
think me rude if I say, that his advice, with 
respect to the use of prepositions, is something 
against which it is wise to fight ? 

Concerning my sentence, 

" An becomes a before a consonant sound ", 

Mr. S. says ; — " It would be sufficient to say, ' An 
" ' becomes a before a consonant.' " The fallacy 
of this statement is easily shown. F, L, M, N, 
E, S, and X, are consonants ; and if " an becomes 
"a before a consonant", as Mr. S. asserts, then 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 97 

we ought to say ; — a F, a L, a M, a N, a B, a S, 
and & X; a statement which needs only to be 
mentioned in order to bring ridicule upon the 
utterer. But an does become a before a con- 
sonant sound, even though the letter having that 
sound is a vowel; e.g.: — we say, "#U",not "anTJ'\ 
With the expression 

" a consonant sound ", 

Mr. S. finds fault, alleging that as " consonant ** 
means "harmonizing together", a "consonant 
"sound" is an " harmonious sound " ; and that 
I ought to have said; — "a consonantal sound". 
This is another instance of Mr. S.'s short- 
sightedness. The word "consonant", in the 
expression "a consonant sound", is not an adjec- 
tive, meaning " harmonious", but is a noun and the 
name of certain letters of the alphabet ; and " a 
consonant sound" is the sound of a consonant. 
It is just as correct an expression as is either 
" a vote el sound" or " a thunder clap ". I suppose 
that they say at Trinity College, "a vowelaZ 
" sound", and " a thunderaZ clap " ! Apropos of 
Mr. S.'s tautological expression 



" harmonizing together 9 *; 



H 



98 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

I should much like to know how sounds can 
harmonize otherwise than together. 

My critic of Trinity College thus continues 
his remarks : — 

" Mr. Moon writes, ' We use one when we speak nu- 
" * merically, and wish to signify that there are 
" ' not more than one ; whereas we nse either a 
" ' or an when we wish to emphasize not the 
" ' number but the description of the thing spoken 
" ' of.' What does he mean by speaking ' nume- 
"'rically'?" 

As Mr. S. evidently does not know the meaning 
"of mmmca%",Ireferhimto ' Worcester's Amen- 
' can Dictionary 9 ; there he will find that it means 
"with respect to number". The answer, then, to 
Mr. S.-fl question is very simple: — to "speak 
"numerically" is to "speak with respect to 
" number". YetMr. S.says; — "Mr.Moon's phrase 
" absolutely means nothing. He might as well say 
"that a man speaks classically because he speaks 
"with reference to the classics" The summing 
up of this beautiful specimen of collegiate logic 
may be made thus : — Because " classically " means 
in a classical manner, "numerically" must mean 
in a numerical manner ; and because " classi- 
" cally" does not mean with respect to the 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 99 

classics, "numerically" cannot mean with respect 
to number ! If Mr. S. allows himself to be led 
away by that "Will-o'-the-wisp", the analogous 
construction of words, he will find himself and 
his pupils struggling in a bog of absurdities. 
For instance, let him take the English words 
"wick" and "wicked", and the corresponding 
French words "meclne" and "mechant", and he 
will be able to prove, if not to the satisfaction of 
scholars, at least to his own satisfaction, that 
there is an intimate relationship between a man 
and a tallow candle ! 



h 2 



100 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. a. P. Marsh. 



CEITICISM XII. 
THE HON. GEORGE P. MAESH. 

Condensation is one of the last lessons which a 
young writer learns. He is afraid to be simple, 
and has no faith in beauty which is unadorned ; 
hence, he crowds his sentences with superlatives, 
and never uses a noun without accompanying it 
with an adjective. In his estimation, turgidity 
passes for eloquence, and simplicity is but an other 
name for that which is weak and unmeaning. 
But there is an error which is the very opposite 
of diffuseness, and which is equally to be avoided. 
It consists of so injudicious a compression of 
our language that the meaning becomes distorted. 
I will illustrate this by the following passage 
from Mr. Marsh's ' Notes \ He says ; — 

" Not only every author known to fame, but hundreds 
" whose names have scarcely survived themselves, 
" have been, or will be, carefully read, and every 
M first occurrence, every happy use, every forcible 
" example of each word, accepted for introduction 
" into the dictionary." 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 101 

The errors in this sentence are obvious. 
"Every" is singular; whereas "all" is either 
singular or plural; therefore, as the verb is in 
the plural, it would have been better to say ; — 
" Not only all authors known to fame, but hun- 
"dreds whose names have scarcely survived 
"themselves have been" etc. In the latter part 
of the sentence, where it may be thought un- 
desirable to change "every" into "all", the verb 
should have been put in the singular, thus : — 
" Every first occurrence, every happy use, every 
"forcible example has been, or will be, accepted". 

Mr. Marsh's sentence is singularly faulty. 
What are we to understand by " every first 

* i occurrence of each word ' ' ? How can there 

be more than one first occurrence of each word ? 

There is, in 'Booth's Principles of English 
' Grammar' * page 115, an excellent rule respect- 
ing the proper use of 

"shall" and "will". 

It is as follows: — "If the speaker is the nomi- 
" native to the verb, and also determines its 

* " Booth certainly excelled most other grammarians 
in learning and acuteness." — G. Broivn's * Grammar of 
English Grammars? p. 233. 



102 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

"accomplishment; — or, if he is neither the 
"nominative to the verb nor determines its 
"accomplishment, — the proper auxiliary is 
"'will': in every other case it is 'shall 9 " 
Let the reader follow me in illustrating this 
rule, and its value will soon be apparent to 
him. I will take the old story of the man 
who fell into the water and exclaimed; — "I will 
"be drowned, and nobody shall save me." In 
the phrase "I will be drowned", the speaker 
is the nominative to the verb, but he did not 
mean to determine its accomplishment ; he had 
no intention of being drowned ; hence, the im- 
propriety of his using "will". In the phrase "no- 
" body shall save me ", the speaker was not the 
nominative to the verb, neither did he intend to 
determine its accomplishment ; therefore he 
could not with propriety use "shall". He should 
have said ; — I shall be drowned, and nobody will 
"save me"; because, in the first clause, the 
speaker is the nominative to the verb, but does 
not determine its accomplishment ; hence, the 
propriety of using "shall"; and, in the last 
clause, he is neither the nominative to the verb, 
nor does he determine its accomplishment; hence, 
the propriety of using "will". Mr. Marsh, in 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 103 

speaking of the English lexicon now in process 
of compilation by the London Philological Society, 
says ;— 

" But though we have thus held ourselves aloof from 
"this great enterprise, the orthography which 
" shall be adopted by the editors of this lexicon 
"will, probably, be universally accepted on our 
" side of the Atlantic as well as on the other." 

By the foregoing rule, we see that Mr. Marsh 
should have used " will " instead of " shall ". 

There are some words which, describing a con- 
dition that is unalterable, do not admit of com- 
parison. One of these is "universal" ; yet what 
is more common than to read of a practice 
which is said to be "so universal"? Another of 
these words is "perfect"; yet writers are con- 
tinually speaking of " a more perfect" state of 
things. What is meant, we can only guess. 
" Complete " is another word of this class. The 
idea which it conveys is that of a state of fulness, 
having no deficiency, entire. What, then, does 
Mr. Marsh wish us to understand by 

" Completest", "our comjpletest dictionaries ", "greater 
" completeness " ? 



104 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

How can anything be completer than that which 
is complete ? How can there be a better than 
the best, or a greater than the greatest? One 
dictionary may be more copious, or be more 
comprehensive, than an other ; but it cannot be 
more complete; for, completeness is a fixed state, 
one not admitting of increase. I am aware that 
the Most High has been spoken of as the Most 
Highest ; and the solecism has been pardoned 
in consideration of the intensity of the religious 
feeling in which it had its origin. I am aware, 
also, that Milton has spoken of a depth which is 
"lower" than the "lowest". But, whatever 
license may be allowed to a great poet, such an 
expression in simple prose is sheer nonsense. 
There is a nice distinction to be observed be- 
tween the meaning of the words 

"so "and "as" 

when used in connection with such superlative 
words as those of which I have been speaking. 
We may say of two things, each of which is per- 
fect ; — " one is as perfect as the other "; but if we 
wish to speak in a negative form and to state of 
two things, that one is perfect and the other is 
not perfect, however near it may be to perfection, 



Hon. a. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 105 

we cannot say; — " one is not so perfect as the 
" other "; and the reason V7hy it cannot be said 
is, that the expression implies the existence of 
degrees of perfection ; or, in other words, that a 
thing can be perfect and not perfect at the same 
time. "So perfect", "so supreme", "so univer- 
sal", are all wrong: a thing cannot be partly 
supreme or partly universal. A whole contains 
its parts ; but a part cannot contain the whole, 
and therefore ought not to be spoken of by a 
term which is applicable only to the whole. It 
will be seen, then, that " so " and " as " are not 
interchangeable. 

Booth says, on page 80;— "In comparative 
"clauses of equality, 'as' is both the relative 
" and the antecedent ; e.g.- — ' John is * as brave 
"as James.' But when one of the parts differs 
"from the other in degree, the antecedent is 
"'so 7 ; — 'John is not so brave as James.' The 
" general rule is that 'as' alludes to likeness and 
" similarity, while ' so ' refers to the comparison 
" of extent or degree, and it is in the misappre- 
"hension of this English idiom that the natives 
" of Scotland are so apt to err. 'I will answer 
" 'his letter so soon as I receive it', should be 
" written ' as soon as ', because the point of time 



106 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

"is the same. 'He is not as rich as he was', 
" should be ' so rich as ', etc., because the states 
" are unequal. 'He ran as fast as I did', is 
" equality. ' He ran so fast that I could not 
" - overtake him ', is superiority. ' As great ', ' as 
"'much', { as high', is a bulk, quantity, and 
" height exactly equal to something to which the 
"'as' relates; but 'so great', 'so much', * so 
" ' high ', is a certain degree of bulk, quantity, and 
" height, which requires to be ascertained by a 
" comparison of less or more" 
Mr. Marsh says ; — 

" In a lexicon of a dead language the vocabulary of 
" the recorded literature may be absolutely com- 
" plete so far as the specification of the words 
" which composed it is concerned." 

From the foregoing remarks, the reader will at 
once perceive that Mr. Marsh ought to have 
" said ;—as far as the specification of the words 
"which composed it is concerned." 

Nothing in Mr. Marsh's ' Notes' so much sur- 
prises me as his misuse of words. Here is an other 
instance. He speaks of 

"A scientific vocabulary of not less than 300,000 
" words." 

Is it really necessary to remind Mr. Marsh that 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 107 

"less" refers to quantity in bulk, and that 
"fewer " is the proper word to use when speaking 
of numbers ? 
Mr. Marsh says ; — 

" Such persons are apt to fancy that they detect, or 
"rather [,] feel, an inherent significance in the 
"words of their native speech. In their view 
" a house is called house because it is a house : a 
" horse is called horse because it is a horse. To 
" them the name is as truly and as obviously a 
" quality or property of the animal as his color 
" or the number of his legs, and they often mani- 
" fest a virtuous indignation against the unhappy 
"foreigner who knows no better than to call a 
"horse a cheval" 

Concerning this passage I have one question 
to ask : — Is the virtuous indignation against the 
luckless foreigner, manifested by the horse's 
legs ? 

One more question: — On what do Flemish 
painters live — what is their food ? Mr. Marsh is 
surely joking when he speaks of — 

" The battered copper vessels, old brooms, cobwebs, 
" appleparings, and the like, which the Flemish 
" painters scatter so freely about their interiors. 9 ' 

When a word which has a technical, as well as 
a literal, signification is used technically, it should 
be enclosed in inverted commas. 



108 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 



CEITICISM XIII. 
THE HOK GEOEGE P. MAESH. 

A knowledge of grammar may be acquired by 
study ; but by no amount of study can a man 
who is destitute of good taste acquire that deli- 
cate quality of mind ; though it is as essential to 
gracefulness of expression in language, as are a 
musical ear and soul, to the true utterances of 
the musician and of the poet. 

What are we to think of a verbal critic who 
uses a noun in three totally different senses in 
one criticism; and who, as if that were not 
enough, then makes confusion more confounded, 
by prefixing to the noun, when next he uses it, 
such an adjective, that his description of a term 
in grammar is identical with a storekeeper's 
hackneyed description of his wares ? I speak of 
facts. The Hon. George P. Marsh's champion, 
Mr. S., of Trinity College, (for I have not yet 
finished with him,) tells us not only of an 
"article" [a criticism] upon the "article" [a or 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 109 

an] ; but, after mentioning grocers and druggists 
and their "articles" [of commerce], speaks of 
the little word " an " as " a genuine article "1 

" Can such things be . . . without our special wonder ? " 

The following is an other specimen of Mr. S.'s 
tautology. He says ; — 

" I come now to a sentence which is one of Mr. Moon's 
" most characteristic sentences ; perhaps, also, it 
" is one of his most erroneous sentences : ' It is 
" ' a curious fact, mentioned in a recent number 
" * of the ' Athenceum ', that we English alone of 
" * all nations, ancient or modern, have a bona 
" 'fide article which is distinct from ' one ', though 
" ' contracted from ' one ', and meaning ' one V " 

The foregoing, which Mr. S. calls one of my 
most characteristic sentences, is really not mine ; 
it is a literal quotation from the ' Athenceum , No. 
1929, page 497, and ought to have been marked 
as such by inverted commas. However, as the 
commas have been omitted, and, consequently, 
the sentence stands as if it were mine, I will 
examine Mr. S/s condemnation of it. He states, 
in the first place, that — 

" The whole assertion is untrue, because the Ameri- 
" can nation has the same article as the English 



110 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

"nation, and therefore the English nation does 
" not stand alone in this respect." 

This is another instance of S.'s limited know- 
ledge of the meaning of words. Evidently, he 
thinks that the word "nation" is synonymous 
with "people"; but it is not; and that the 
writer in the ' Aihenceum ' is correct in his use of 
the word, will be seen on reading the following 
extract from ' Worcester s American Dictionary: — 
" Nation denotes a race of men, or connection by 
"birth or descent; people, persons or men of 
"common subordination, or those who form a 
" community. The people of Saxony and Bavaria 
" are a portion of the German nation'' When, 
in discoursing on language we speak of "the 
" English ", or " the English nation ", we include 
all those peoples which are connected with us by 
birth, or by descent, and who speak that language. 
The Americans are not a part of the English 
people; but they are, in the true sense of the 
term, a part of the English nation; (L. natio, 
from nascor, to be born) i.e., a race of men con- 
nected with the English by birth. 

Mr. S. next objects to the expression 

" We English " ; 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. Ill 

and says, of the word " English " ; — " When 
" it denotes the nation or people, it must be 
"preceded by the definite article or by a de- 
" monstrative pronoun." Surely, what is true 
of the word " English ", used in that sense, is true 
also of the word "Americans"? Why, then, 
does Mr. S. object to my saying, — " We English" ; 
and yet allow himself to say, — " We Americans " ? 
His theory is justly condemned by his own prac- 
tice in the very page containing his dogmatical 
assertion respecting it. The expressions, " We 
"English", " We Americans", " ye Corinthians": 
(2 Cor., vi, 11) are strictly correct. " English ", 
by itself, means the language; but "English", 
with a personal pronoun before it, means Englishmen. 
Of course, in elliptical expressions, " English " 
may have various meanings. 

The next objection raised by my collegiate 
critic is to the expression " alone of all nations ". 
He says ; — 

u ' Of all nations ' is properly used only in denoting a 
" comparison after a superlative, e.g., the greatest 
" of all nations ; or it is used after a numeral. 
*■ Mr. Moon uses it in neither of these two ways, 
" [it would have been sufficient, to say, — ' neither 
u ' of these ways ' ; the idea of there being ' two \ 



112 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

" is conveyed in the word * neither,'"] and therefore 
" he misuses it. Would it not be better to say : 
" alone among all nations ? " 

Mr. S. is still blundering over the use of the pre- 
position " of" ; not knowing that " one o/them " 
is "one among them ". He says that the phrase 
" of all nations " is properly used only in denoting 
a comparison after a superlative, and that I have 
not used it in that way. Indeed ! I have always 
thought that " alone " is a superlative. I suppose 
that they say at Trinity College ;— " alone ", 
" aloner ", " alonest " / Mr. S. adds ;— " or it is 
"used after a numeral. Mr. Moon uses it in 
" neither of these two ways ". Mr. S. does not 
seem to know the derivation of even the simple 
word "alone" '; let me, then, tell him that "alone" 
is a contraction of " all one "; and if " one " is not 
a numeral, will Mr. S. tell me what it is ? Very 
oddly, it happens that on the first page of the 
number of ' The Nation ' containing these re- 
marks of Mr. S.'s, there is the expression, 
"Kansas, alone of all the states". 

The phrase " ancient or modern " next comes 
under Mr. S.'s condemnation. He says ; — 

" The conjunction ' or ' treacherously leads Mr. Moon 
" into a singular error. He divides the nations 



Hon. G. P. Marsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 113 

"into two classes, ancient nations and modern 
"nations, and asserts that, in either of these 
" classes, the English is the only nation which 
" has a bond fide article. The English is the only 
" one of the ancient nations ! " 

There is a subtile fallacy here which must be 
exposed. The writer in ' The Athenceum ' does 
not say that the English is one of the ancient 
nations. He says that the English is one " of 
f all nations ". He then divides the " all nations " 
into two sections ; the one, " ancient " ; the other, 
" modern" ; but that division does not make the 
writer place the English among the ancient 
nations to the exclusion of the modern, nor among 
the modern nations to the exclusion of the ancient. 
The English is still one " of all nations ". It is one 
thing to say ; — " We English alone of all ancient 
"nations or of all modern nations", and it is 
an other thing to say; — "We English alone of 
" all nations ancient or modern ". The former 
expression divides the nations into two classes, 
and places the English nation, first in one 
class, and afterward in the other; whereas the 
latter expression places the English among 
" all nations ", and then divides those nations 
into two classes ; the one, " ancient " ; the other, 

i 



114 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. ' 

" modern ". As for Mr. S.'s emendation ; — 
that of substituting "and" for "or", I should 
much like to know how "all nations" can be 
said to be "ancient and modern". Some are 
ancient, and some are modern; therefore, they 
may "all" be classed under the designation 
' ancient or modern " ; and this the writer in 
6 The Aihenceum ' has done. But they are not all 
" ancient and modern ". So that instead of the 
conjunction " or " having treacherously led Mr. 
Moon into a singular error, it is the conjunction 
" and " which has treacherously led Mr. S. into 
a singular error. 

There are several other inaccuracies and mis- 
statements in Mr. S.'s letter, but my patience 
fails me; so, after one more exposure of my 
opponent's errors, I will finish this criticism. He 
censures me for saying 

" the using it ", 

and supports his opinion by the following quota- 
tion from Lindley Murray: — "The present 
44 participle, with the definite article ' the' before 
"it, becomes a substantive, and must have the 
" preposition ' of after it." Let us examine this. 
Supposing I were speaking of my having had the 
good fortune to meet two of my old school-fellows, 



Hon. G. P. Harsh.] BAD ENGLISH. 115 

Edwin and Arthur ; I should manifest very great 
ignorance of the proprieties of language if, follow- 
ing the rule quoted by Mr. S., I were to speak of 
the meeting as, "the meeting of Edwin and 
Arthur." That would be to describe their meeting 
each other, not my meeting them. The case may 
be very simply put thus : the act was, meeting 
Edwin and Arthur ; the agent was, myself; the 
act, therefore, was my act; consequently, my 
act was "my meeting Edwin and Arthur" ; and 
" my meeting " was " the meeting which took place ". 
Now, according to Lindley Murray's rule, as 
quoted by his devoted disciple, Mr. S., of Trinity 
College, I ought to say that it was "the meeting 
of which took place " ! because " meeting " is the 
present participle of the verb " to meet " ; and, 
being preceded by the definite article " the ", be- 
comes a substantive, and "must have the prepo- 
sition 'of after it." Mr. S.'s conversation 
must be singularly puzzling. I can imagine 
him saying to his college friends ; — " The prepar- 
ing of [for] my departure, the driving of [to] 
"the station, the entering of [upon] the railway 
"journey, and the arriving of [at] my destina- 
tion, seem now like a dream." 

Finally, if I say of this rule; — "the making 

i2 



116 BAD ENGLISH. [Hon. G. P. Marsh. 

"of it is a disgrace to Lindley Murray", my 
words refer to the manner in which it has 
been made ; but if I say ; — " the making it is a 
"disgrace to Lindley Murray ", my words very 
properly refer, not to the mode of the action, 
but to the action itself. 

As Mr. S. has written to me "for the last 
" time ", and has kindly bid me good-by, I return 
the valediction, and at the same time thank him 
for his courtesy. Although I differ with him on 
many points, I acknowledge that I have profited 
by his criticisms. "He who wrestles with us, 
"strengthens us; our antagonist is thus our 
" helper" — Burke. 



THIRD PART. 



CRITICISMS, 
OKIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN AMEKICA, 

ON 

EDWARD 8. GOULDS "GOOD ENGLISH". 



BAD ENGLISH EXPOSED. 



CEITICISM XIV. 

EDWARD S. GOULD. 

In Mr. Gould's ' Good English ' there is much to be 
commended; much for which we owe him our 
thanks. His reprobation of errors, common to 
the current literature of the day, is timely and 
valuable ; but far more so is the evidence which 
he brings forward, that even our most careful 
writers are sometimes off their guard — himself 
among the number. 

I at first shrank from exposing Mr. Gould's 
errors ; and that, partly for my own sake and 
partly for his : for my own sake, because I feared 
that it would be considered discourteous to do 
so, after his laudatory remarks on ' The Dean's 
' English ' ; and for his sake, because adverse criti- 
cism might injuriously affect his reputation as 
an author ; and he really has done good service 



120 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

in the field of letters, and merits praise rather 
than reproof. But the very ability displayed in 
his work, magnifies the gravity of the errors 
which it contains ; hence, the need of a public 
protest against them. Under these circum- 
stances, Mr. Gould will, I trust, while he accepts 
the criticisms themselves as a mild rebuke for 
his carelessness, accept also the fact of my 
writing them, as an acknowledgment of much 
that is excellent in his work. 

That hastily-written contributions to journals 
contain errors in grammar, and are faulty in 
construction, is not to be wondered at ; but that 
there should be, in treatises on those errors, the 
identical faults which those treatises are written 
to condemn, is a circumstance well calculated to 
impress all students of the language, with the 
necessity for increased vigilance; for, if those 
who have specially devoted their time to the 
cultivation of a pure and an accurate style of 
writing, occasionally fail to write correctly, even 
after their most careful efforts, how numerous 
must be the faults of those who consider that 
but little attention on their part is needed, to 
perfect themselves in the knowledge and use of 
their mother tongue. 



Edward S. Gould,] BAD ENGLISH. 121 

As a lesson, then, which may be instructive to 
such persons ; and as an example of the prone - 
ness to error observable in the works of even 
those who aspire to the office of public teachers 
of grammar, let us look at the composition of 
Mr. Gould's ' Good English , or Popular Errors in 
'Language. 9 

The very title implies an assurance that the 
author has taken great pains with the book ; and 
this assurance is confirmed by our finding in it 
the following passages. I quote from page 61 : — 

" It is not overstating the case to say that Dean 
" Trench, while he is beyond question a writer of 
" general excellence and force, is frequently guilty 
" of extreme carelessness, — which, in boohs ofphi- 
" lological criticism, is hardly to be excused." 

Again, page 116 : — 

" The Dean [of Canterbury] can plead neither haste 

" nor inadvertence in his present work; 

" he may fairly be held responsible for every error 
" it contains" 

Once more, page 131 : — 

" And now, as to the style of the Dean's book, taken 
" as a whole. He must be held responsible for 
" every error in it ; because, as has been shown, he 
has had full leisure for its revision" 



122 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

Surely, such language is not more applicable 
to Archbishop Trench and to Dean Alford, than it 
is to him who critically reviews their writings ; and 
I beg that the readers of the following criticisms 
will bear in mind what Mr. E. S. Gould has said 
upon this subject, and they will see how gladly 
at last he shelters himself behind the very defence 
which he denied to others. 

There are, in Mr. Gould's book, instances of 
erroneous judgment, as well as errors of gram- 
mar. One of the former occurs in reference to a 
passage of mine in a criticism on Mr. Marsh's 
essays. I had said ; — 

" That, no doubt, was what he intended to do ; but 
" certainly it was not what he did." 

Concerning this, Mr. Gould remarks that the 
italicized words should be in the present tense, 
and not in the past, as I have put them. 
With all due respect to Mr. Gould's opinion in 
general, I beg leave to differ with him here. In 
expressing either abstract or universal truths, 
the present tense of the verb ought undoubtedly 
to be employed ; and if a circumstance spoken 
of exists only in the present, then, too, the 
verb must be in the present tense ; but if we 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 123 

are speaking not of abstract truths, but of 
some specific circumstance which existed in the 
past and which still exists, we may, at our 
option, speak of either its past or its present 
state. In the criticism referred to, that which 
the person spoken of intended to do, and that 
which he did not intend to do, are as much 
matters of the past, as they are of the present ; 
therefore, my sentence is not incorrect ; I say, 
"is not "; but if I chose to speak of the past, I 
might say that it " ivas not" incorrect. A 
very simple test of the fitness or of the unfitness 
of the tense of the verb to convey our meaning 
is, to put the adverb "now" after the verb in 
the present tense, and the adverb "then" after 
the verb in the past tense. 

Mr. Gould has done well to notice the common 
error of confounding the past and present tenses 
of verbs ; but an apter illustration of it may be 
found in a sentence of his own. On page 186, 
he says of Kean and Macready ; — 

" And the result ivas, that they gained the prize for 
"which they contended; namely, enduring fame." 

Now, the perpetuity of Kean's and of Macready's 
fame, is a matter of the present and of the 



124 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

future, rather than of the past ; indeed, if the 
fame existed in the past only, it could not pro- 
perly be said to be " enduring ". Therefore, it 
would be more consistent to say; — " The result 
" is that they have gained enduring fame." 

Elsewhere Mr. Gould censures me for not 
exposing what he calls an error of Dean Alford's ; 
but it is Mr. Gould who is in fault in condemn- 
ing Dean Alford for what is not an error, and me 
for not exposing it. The passage in question is 
this : — " If I had believed the Queens English to 
"have been rightly laid down by the dictionaries 
" and the professors of rhetoric, I need not have 
" troubled myself to write about it." Mr. Gould 
says that this is wrong; and that the Dean 
should have said ; — " If I had believed it to be ", 
etc. In my opinion both forms are right ; and 
Mr. Gould errs in condemning either of them. 

An other instance is found on page 191. I 
read : — 

"It is needless for me to add, that your doing so 
" would [future] cost you no effort. You would 
"merely have done [jpast] what you do every 
" day, without a thought as to how you do it.'*' 

It seems as if Mr. Gould had here sacrificed 



Edward S Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 125 

grammatical propriety, for the sake of avoiding 
too frequent a repetition of the little word "do". 
He makes matters worse. Why did he not 
reconstruct his sentence ? 

There is, on page 28, an other example of this 
kind of error ; but it is an error in exactly the 
opposite direction:- — the present tense is there 
used instead of the past, not the past instead of 
the present. It is in some otherwise sensible 
remarks concerning the use of the words "beside " 
and " besides ". Mr. Gould says ;— 

"Our lexicographers have contented themselves with 
" leaving these two words as they find them in 
"the pages of good and bad writers — jumbled 
" together without any attempt at discrimination 
" between them." 

The expression " our lexicographers " must, 
unquestionably, include Johnson, Walker, Bich- 
ardson, Webster, and others, who are dead; how, 
then, can they be said to "find " those two words 
in the pages of good and bad writers ? Surely 
there is not, in the next world, any reading of 
the works of bad writers, whatever there may 
be of those of good ones ! Mr. Gould should 
have said ; — " Our lexicographers contented 
"themselves with leaving these two words as 



126 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

" they found them in the pages of good and of 
"bad writers." The preposition "of" is needed 
here, because the writers mentioned are, evi- 
dently, not those uncertain writers who some- 
times write well and sometimes ill ; but two 
distinct classes of writers; the one, good; the 
other, bad. 

In commenting on the vulgarism of using the 
word "figure" for "number", Mr. Gould brings 
forward a passage from Dean Alford's ' Queen's 
English 9 , where the vulgarism is found, and he 
adds ; — 

"Mem. Put that against some of the Dean's sneers!" 

If the Dean should happen to read Mr. Gould's 
work, he will find that the passage begins 
thus : — 

" Newspaper usage and oral usage has [they has !] 
"made this word synonymous with amount"; 

and I fancy that the Dean will say with a 
smile ; — " Mem. Put that against some of Mr. 
" Gould's sneers!" 

Should the Dean continue his perusal of the 
book, he will, doubtless, wince under Mr. Gould's 
sarcasm, on page 133 : — " Neither of which are 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 127 

"taken into account", says the Dean. " Coni- 
"ment here is needless", remarks Mr. Gould. 
But, on page 197, the Dean has his revenge; for 
Mr. Gould says ; — 

" He may have studied his way by the chart, and may 
" think that he has mastered its sinuosities ; but 
" the misleading power of the verse divisions — 
" which seem to be guides and are not — constantly 
" betray [it betray !] him into difficulty." 

Mr. Gould has forgotten that the nominative 
to his verb is in the singular. 

These singular mistakes are really astonishing ! 
How are they to be avoided ? Only by the culti- 
vation of a habit of careful patient examination 
of the diversity of meaning produced by the 
different placing of the same words. As one 
means to that end, I strongly urge all students 
of the language to acquire a practical knowledge 
of the game of chess. It tends to produce 
precision of mind ; and, by accustoming the 
player to weigh well the relative position and 
influence of every piece on the board, makes more 
familiar and easy to him the task of judging 
accurately concerning the position and influence 
of every word in a sentence. 



128 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 



CEITICISM XV. 

EDWABD S. GOULD. 

There is a puzzling inconsistency in Mr. Gould's 
use of certain phrases. On page 213, he says ; — 

" The majority remain " ; 

again, on page 166, he says;— 

" The majority speak in favour of the great changes 
" that have been made " ; 

but, on page 42, he says ; — 

" The majority has the best of the argument." 

If "majority" is used as a noun in the plural 
in one place, why is it used as a noun in the 
singular in an other? Moreover, in the very 
paragraph in which "majority" is used as a 
noun in the singular, (page 42,) "minority" is 
used as a noun in the plural :— 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 129 

" The opposing minority become mere schismatics." 

Then, on the opposite page, we are taken back 
to the singular : — 

" The number makes but a very small minority " ; 

and, on page 73, we return to the plural : — ■ 

" An abundance of followers were found ". 

An abundance were ! 

I do not know whether the use of "shall" and 
"will" is different in the United States from 
what it is in England; but the same peculiarity 
respecting its use is observable in the writings of 
the Hon. George P. Marsh, Dr. M. Scheie De Vere, 
and Mr. Gould. Each of these writers occasionally 
uses either " will" or " ivoidd" where an English- 
man would use either "shall" or "should". 
Mr. Gould says, on page 212, and, again, on 
page 222; — "I tvoidd like" to do so-and-so. 
On this side of the Atlantic we call such an 
expression a Scotticism. Certainly it is not pure 7 
English. 

It seems strange that Mr. Gould should have 
forgotten the rule that not only do conjunctions 
couple like moods and cases, but that, "in 

K 



130 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

"general, any two terms which we connect by a 
" conjunction should be the same in kind or 
" quality rather than different or heterogeneous". 
On pages 29 and 30 I read as follows ; — 

" They are reproduced here for the twofold purpose 
"of relieving the writer of this book from a 
"suspicion of plagiarism; and to show that his 
"views, as then expressed, are so far corrobo- 
rated." 

Mr. Gould having said, in the former clause 
of the sentence; — "of relieving", should have 
said, in the latter clause; — " and of showing" . 

Here is another sentence which is not properly 
balanced ; page 200 : — 

" But there is a large class of clergymen who know 
" the difficulty of making themselves heard, with- 
" out knowing the right method to overcome it." 

This should be ; — " the difficulty of making " ; 
and, "the right method of overcoming" . 
On page 41, I read ; — 

" In addition to the misuse of ' either ' and ' neither ' 
"these words are both frequently misjoro- 
" nounced" 

This should be ; — " In addition to the misuse 



Edward S. Gould,] BAD ENGLISH. 131 

"of ( either' and ' neither' is the frequent mispro- 
" nunciation of both these words." The careful 
reader of these criticisms will not have failed to 
observe that I have altered the position of the 
word "both". This has been done to bring the 
sentence into strict accordance with the meaning 
which Mr. Gould intended to convey. He did 
not intend to speak of words which are "both 
"frequently mispronounced" and frequently some- 
thing else ; but to speak of " both words" as being 
frequently mispronounced. Hence, the necessity 
for the alteration. The parts of a sentence 
which are most closely connected in meaning 
should be as closely as possible connected in 
position. 

As for adverbs, Mr. Gould censures Archbishop 
Trench for having, in ' English Past and Present', 
misplaced the adverb "only", and said; — "only 
"different", when he ought to have said; — 
" different only "; yet Mr. Gould himself, on the 
very next page, (61,) similarly errs in using the 
adverb " also " ; and writes ; — 

" Trench also says, in the same volume," etc. ; 

as if 'English Past and Present' had not been 
written by him solely ! What Mr. Gould means 

k2 



132 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

is ; — " Trench says also, in the same volume," 
etc. 

On page 105, Mr. Gould gives us a list of 
words ending in " logy", and says ; — 

" Of these, one only takes * er ' as an exclusive termi- 
" nation, namely, ' astrologer \" 

Why does Mr. Gould censure Archbishop Trench 
for saying "only different", and yet himself say 
"only takes"? He should have said; — "Of 
"these, only one takes 'er' as an exclusive 
"termination, namely, 'astrologer' " Of course, 
in some sentences the expressions " only different" 
and " only takes" would be correct. The position 
which the adverb must occupy is determined by 
the meaning of the writer. 

There is a similar error on page 150. Mr. 
Gould there says ;— 

" In Wehster's Dictionary of 1866, the following words 
" are retained in their exclusiveness, that is, 
" they are not severally united by brackets with 
" orthodox orthography." 

If I were disposed to be hypercritical, I might 
ask, what the apparently self-contradictory ex- 
pression, "severally united" ', means; and also, 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH, 133 

what kind of things " brackets with orthodox 
"orthography" are. But, seriously, Mr. Gould 
ought to have said; — "they, severally, are not 
"united by brackets to the same words spelt 
" according to orthodox orthography." 

Mr. Gould tells us, on page 50, that " ad- 
" verbs refer to, or qualify, what a person or 
"thing does; and adjectives, what a person or 
"thing is, or seems to be." As he evidently is 
familiar with the rule respecting the proper use 
of adverbs and of adjectives, I am surprised 
to find him saying, on page 204 ;— 

46 This passage is more commonly read wrong than, 
" perhaps, any other in the Bible." 

Is not reading an act — a something which a 
person " does" ? Why, then, does not Mr. Gould 
qualify it by the adverb " wrongly" ? 

Mr. Gould finds fault with Dean Alford for 
saying "more decisive", and asks, on page 112 ; — 

" Does the Dean hold that decisive is an adjective 
" that admits of comparison ? " 

I reply, on behalf of my former antagonist, by 
asking Mr. Gould whether "universally" and 
" totally" admit of comparison ? If not, why does 



134 BAD ENGLISH. v [Edward S. Gould. 

he condemn the Dean for saying " more decisive" 
and yet himself say, on page 38 ; — " the phrase is 
"now so universally used" ; and, on page 178, 
say; — "so totally at variance with well-estab- 
"lished conclusions" ? A decision, of a court of 
law, for instance, may be confirmed by a higher 
tribunal, and thereby be made " more decisive" ; 
but "universality" and "totality" cannot be other- 
wise than perfect or complete. To use language 
implying that anything can be universal, and 
yet only partly universal ; or total, and yet only 
partly total, is to speak nonsensically ; yet such 
is the import of Mr. Gould's expressions, "so 
"universally", "so totally". The little word 
"so" is often misused in Mr. Gould's ( Good 
' English 9 . It occurs four times in four con- 
secutive lines, on page 213. I there read; — 

" Cannot see why the clergyman should be so. But 
" for all that he is so ; it is in the nature of 
"things that he should be so; and he is nearly 
" helpless while he remains so." 

This is the very opposite of elegant. 
"So" and "such" are very greatly in favour 
with demonstrative young ladies ; with them, 
every beautiful object is either "such a beauty !" 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 135 

or "so beautiful!" The excessive use of these 
words, or, indeed, of any set form of words, is a 
mannerism, and should be avoided. "So", in 
its proper place, is a very precious little word ; 
and no where is it more precious than in the 
expression; — "God so loved the world". But 
the "so", in Mr. Gould's expression — "so to- 
" tally", destroys the force of the word which 
it is meant to intensify. 

Of the phrase "in so far as", Mr. Gould says, 
on page 62 ; — 

" It seems strange that so clumsy a phrase could get 
" into use when the proper phrase is so familiar 
" and simple ; but so it is that men will cumber 
" themselves about [yritK] many things when but 
" few things are needed. The in of the phrase is 
" worse than superfluous." 

Now turn to page 166, and you will find Mr. 
Gould writing as follows : — 

" The work as it now stands and with the exceptions 
" herein-above designated, is worthy of the praise ■ 
"bestowed on it; for its entire reconstuction 
" has made it what it should be, — always except- 
" ing the uneradicated tares of Webster's sow- 
"ing." 

If Mr. Gould will apply the reasoning that is 



136 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

found on page 62 of his work, to the language 
on page 166 of it, he "will strike out the " and" 
and the "herein", for they, too, are "worse than 
"superfluous " 

" So" is most frequently misused when in con- 
nection with "as". Whether Mr. Gould is 
speaking affirmatively, or negatively, he almost 
always says; — "so — as", — rarely, if ever, "as — 
" as" ; yet, in comparative clauses of equality, 
the latter expression is the correct one ; and the 
former, the correct one in comparative clauses 
of inequality. Having, in a previous criticism, 
fully discussed this matter, it is not necessary 
here to do more than show in what way Mr. 
Gould has misused the words. I read as 
follows :— 

Page 21. — " so long as its place is occupied ". 

„ 37. — so far, at least, as the dictionary is con- 

" cerned ". 
„ 94. — " This is very well, so far as it goes ". 
„ 115. — " This is fortunate, so far as its author is 

" correct ". 
„ 121. — " so far as the newspapers are concerned ". 
„ 143. — " And so long as he occupies the secretary's 

"desk". 
„ 159. — " it is to be observed that, so far as we 

"know". 
,, 191. — " so far as that sentence is concerned ". 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 137 

Page 214. — "so far as I can". 

„ 217. — " he should so far as he can ". 

„ 223. — " so far as I can judge ". 

In each of these passages, "so" should be 
changed for "as". The only sentences which I 
can call to mind, where the words "so — as" 
are proper when speaking affirmatively, are 
those in which the last of the said words 
precedes a verb in the infinitive mood, e.g.: — 
"An author should so write as to be clearly 
" understood "; and those in which we use the 
words emphatically. For instance : — " How can 
" you descend to a thing so base as falsehood ?" 



138 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 



CKITICISM XVI. 
EDWAED S. GOULD. 

Having, in the two previous letters, examined the 
grammatical composition of Mr. Gould's work, 
and incidentally glanced at his condemnation of 
certain expressions of Archbishop Trench's and 
of Dean Alford's, I purpose now to consider Mr. 
Gould's choice of words and their relative posi- 
tions in his sentences, in the work under review. 
He speaks strongly against Noah Webster for 
his attempted alterations in the orthography 
of the language ; and, in Mr. Gould's denuncia- 
tion of the learned lexicographer, he so far lets 
his indignation get the mastery over him, that it 
carries him away beyond the bounds of prudence. 
With an exuberance of metaphor, which gives evi- 
dence of the fertility of his imagination, rather than 
of the soundness of his judgment, he describes 
Dr. Webster as an alchemist; moreover, as an 
alchemist engaged in "tinkering" 7 — the said 
"tinkering" is declared to have the effect of 
imparting a lesson in husbandry ! while the 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 139 

general result of his labours is designated, "the 
"progress of the plague"/ Surely, Mr. Gould 
must have been trying to emulate the Irishman 
who, at a public meeting, rose in a state of great 
excitement, and said ; — " Gentlemen, the apple 
"of discord has been thrown into our midst; 
" and if it be not nipped in the bud, it will burst 
"into a conflagration which will deluge the 
"world!" 

The passage to which I refer occurs on page 
165, and reads thus : — 

"The fact remains, that all [that] Webster really 
"accomplished by his alchemy, is a hopeless 
" confusion [how can a man accomplish a con- 
" fusion ?] in the spelling of (derivatives and all) 
" [" and all " what ?] perhaps two hundred words 
" in a dictionary that contains nearly a hundred 
" thousand words. Whereas, before Webster com- 
" menced his tinkering, the spelling of those two 
" hundred words, however irregular to his appre- 
" hension, was more uniform than probably it ever 
" will be again. He has proved how much easier 
" it is to sow tares than to root them out. . . 
" After the concessions made in the quarto of 
"1866, there is some hope that the further pro- 
" gress of the plague may be stayed.'' 

In the introduction of Mr. Gould's book there 
occurs the following passage : — 



140 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

" His word was spurious originally, and he cannot 
"remove its taint, nor can any subsequent en- 
" dorsement purify it." 



Mr. Gould had been speaking of a word under 
the similitude of a counterfeit coin; (vide sea. J, his 
appellation of " spurious " is, therefore, correct ; 
but, to speak of its being tainted, is, I think, rather 
a perversion of terms ; and when he further speaks 
of its being purified by an endorsement, I am lost 
in wonder how any person, writing on the subject 
of i Good English 9 , could so forget the proprieties 
of language as to use words which are but little 
calculated to convey his meaning. 

Mr. Gould tells us, on page 4, that — 

" The pages of our best writers are thickly sprinkled 
" with violations of the plainest grammatical 
" rules." 

Assuredly his use of figurative language is in 
frequent violation of the plain and simple rule 
that all "figure" should be appropriate. 

He condemns the use of the word "couple", 
except when it refers to two things coupled 
together. I do not object to that ; but I do object 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 141 

to his use of the word "entire" when speaking 
of number. He says, on page 22 ; — 

" The entire number " ; 

this should be, — " The total number". Entire 
has reference to that which is unbroken ; whole, 
to that of which no part is wanting. Total is 
the proper word to use in speaking of the aggre- 
gate of numbers. 

Again, on page 41, the word "less", which is an 
adjective of quantity in bulk, is employed as a 
synonym for "feiver", which is an adjective of 
quantity in number. He says ; — 

"NoZessthanj/we". 

The same error occurs on page 44 : — ■ 

" No less than three ". 

Mr. Gould should have said ;— "no fewer than 
" five"; — " no feiver than three ". 

In condemning the phrase,— "looked beauti- 
"fully", Mr. Gould says ;— 

"A deal of argument has been expended on the 
" question". 

He might, perhaps, think that I were jesting if 



142 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

I asked him whether he meant a little deal, or a 
great deal. The former expression, very strangely, 
is never used ; but the commonness of the latter 
expression might have taught Mr. Gould that 
"deal" means merely "a portion or part". 
It is the German "theil", and is indefinite as to 
quantity. "A deal of argument" is "a portion 
"of argument"; it may be little, or it may be 
much. 

" Traced" is a word that is misapplied by Mr. 
Gould. He says ; — 

" Quaintness must not take the place of accuracy 
" in language : besides, though the phrase in 
" question may be traced to the Bible, it cannot 
" be found in the Bible." 

I imagine Mr. Gould to mean that, though the 
phrase may be imputed to the Bible, it cannot be 
found there ; for if it can be traced — its track be 
followed — to the Bible, it unquestionably can be 
found there. 

Mr. Gould's use of " relieve " and " knowingly" 
next comes under consideration. On page 116, 
I read ; — 

" The author deems it proper to say ; — ... that, 
" although from the Dean's statement, passim. 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 143 

"'in the ' Queen's English, it seems that his book 
"has been very frequently criticised in England, 
"not a word of such criticism, [better, that criti- 
" cism ; ' such ' means similar, but not identical] 
"except such as [better, except that which] the 
" Dean himself quotes, has ever been seen by the 
"present writer; — a statement [tautology — Mr. 
" G-ould had just spoken of ( the Dean's statement'] 
"which must relieve [exonerate] him from the 
"charge of having knowingly ['wittingly' would 
"have been a better word to use here; Icnoivingly 
" may mean cunningly] gone over the same ground 
" as the English critics." 



Further on, I read ; — 

" A proper estimate of the value of these conflicting 
" statements will presently be undertaken.' 9 

We undertake " to estimate ", " to form an esti- 
" mate" , "to give an estimate", or "to make 
"an estimate"; but we do not undertake "an 
"estimate ". 

The use of "some", for "about", is a very 
common error. It is found on page 186 of Mr. 
Gould's work ; he there says ; — 

" The individual parts sustained by the actor do not 
"contain more than some six hundred lines 
" each." 



144 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

On page 199, I read ; — 

" One thing more remains to be said on this subject, — 
"namely, a suggestion on the injury to the 
" voice." 

A "suggestion" is a thing to be made, not 
" said' 1 . 

Lower down on the same page I find the 
following passage : — 

"The next point to which I would call your atten- 
tion is audibleness ; a matter, in one respect, 
"more important than any other principle of 
" elocution." 

Audibleness is an essential of elocution, but it 
is not a principle. 

Concerning a sentence of Archbishop Trench's, 
Mr. Gould remarks, on page 110, that; — "he 
" has, in the preceding sentence, so placed the 
" words 'I think', as to leave the reader in doubt 
"whether they relate to what immediately pre- 
" cedes [tautology — see 'preceding 9 just above] or 
"to what follows them." But, on page 46, Mr. 
Gould himself has written what is equally ambig- 
uous, and that, too, from the very same cause. 
He says ;-— 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 145 

" Our Mutual Friend. This is, so to speak, one of 
" the approved vulgarisms of the day ; and, not- 
" withstanding the numberless exposures of its 
"vulgarity, in newspapers, reviews, and elsewhere, 
" it continues to nourish." 

Do the italicized words refer to what precedes 
them, or what follows them ? Is the vulgarity 
of the vulgarism (I quote Mr. Gould's own words) 
exposed " in newspapers, reviews, and elsezvhere "; 
or does he say of the vulgarism, that, (( in news- 
"papers, reviews, and elsezvhere, it continues to 
" flourish " ? I challenge the reader to come to 
any definite conclusion on the subject. 

One cannot but smile at some of Mr. Gould's 
errors ; they are so ingeniously droll. He says, 
on page 105 ; — 

" There is no short single English word that performs 
"the duty of 'lying'" 

Again ; observe the strange meaning given to 
the following passage by the use of the pronoun 
" them ", instead of the noun to which it is in- 
tended to refer. Mr. Gould says, on page 11 ; — 

" Eeference was made, in the introductory chapter, to 
" words fabricated by ignorant people, and after- 
"ward adopted by people of education. There 

L 



146 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward. S. Gould. 

" are not many of them [ ? * people of education '], 
"speaking comparatively; but their number is 
"every day increasing, and if their increase 
" cannot be checked, they will soon be ' like the 
" ' stars for multitude ' " ! 



Ambiguity in the use of pronouns cannot 
always be avoided, and Dr. Campbell justly says 
in his 'Philosophy of Rhetoric', Vol. II, page 
64 ; — " Some have imagined, that the pronoun 
" ought always regularly to refer to the nearest 
" preceding noun of the same gender and number. 
"But this notion is founded in a mistake, and 
" doth not suit the idiom of any language, 
"ancient or modern." With equal propriety, 
however, the learned Doctor says, on page 55 ; — 
" As the signification of the pronouns is ascer- 
" tained merely by the antecedent to which they 
" refer, the greatest care must be taken, if we would 
" express ourselves perspicuously, that the reference 
"be unquestionable." 

There are, in Mr. Gould's work, many other 
passages which might be critically examined, 
with advantage to the English student, but I 
trust that I have said enough to show that it is 
extremely difficult for even professors of the 
English language to write it correctly. Possibly 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 147 

there are, even in these criticisms, some errors 
of my own ; if so, they, too, will serve to teach 
the same lesson, and make this fact more im- 
pressive, namely, — that to exercise the utmost 
care and vigilance in composition is imperative on 
every person who would acquire the honorable 
distinction of being a graceful and powerful writer. 



l 2 



148 



BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 



CEITICISM XVII. 

EDWARD S. GOULD. 

One of your correspondents, "H. S. D.", asks 
how I justify my use of the expression, — " I differ 
with Mr. Gould." 

" Custom ", lie says, " seems to have established the 
"use of with in such connection, e. g., a member 
" of Parliament says without hesitation, * I differ 
" with the honourable gentleman on that point 
"as widely as the east differs from the west/ 
" So, commonly, where opinions are concerned it 
" is ' differ with ', in all other cases it is * differ 
« 'from'. It would interest some of us to hear 
" from Mr. Moon on this matter, if he thinks the 
"point worthy a moment's attention. How will 
" he justify our employing with to denote the 
"relation of separation, when its proper use 
" seems to be to express that of nearness, con- 
"tiguity?" 



Before replying to this inquiry, I would say 
that the member of Parliament is blamable for 
" darkening counsel by words without know- 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 149 

" ledge ", in attempting to illustrate a difference 
of opinion by instituting a comparison between 
it and something to which it cannot possibly 
bear any resemblance — the difference between 
east and west. 

The objects to be gained by the use of compa- 
risons are various : the elucidation of that which 
is obscure, the enhancement of that which we 
wish to exalt, and the depreciation of that which 
we wish to abase. The full power of this form 
of speech is seen when moral qualities are com- 
pared with moral, and physical with physical. 
But, in the instance under consideration, the 
honourable member differed with his friend in 
opinion ; whereas, the east does not differ from 
the west in opinion. Hence, the incongruity. 
We might as well say of a man's sympathies, 
that they are as broad as the Mississippi : or of a 
woman's affections, that they are as deep as the 
Atlantic, as speak of a difference of opinion as 
being comparable to the difference between cer- 
tain points of the compass. The fault of such 
expressions consists in this : — "width", "breadth", 
and "depth", of opinions, sympathies, and affec- 
tions, are spoken of as if they were things 
palpable, — which could be defined, if not actually 



150 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

measured ; they are, however, but metaphorical 
expressions relating to qualities existing merely 
in the imagination. 

Now let us consider the question of " differ 
with" and "differ from". "H. S. D." says 
that ; — " Commonly, where opinions are con- 
" cerned, it is ' differ with 9 ; in all other cases it 
" is ' differ from 9 ". These words imply that the 
use of the preposition "with " is rendered neces- 
sary whenever it is opinions, and not things, 
which form the topic of conversation. But, that 
this is not the reason why that preposition is 
used "in such connection" will be apparent when 
we consider, that although we say; — "I differ 
"with you in opinion ", we never say; — "My 
" opinion differs with yours", but always, — " My 
" opinion differs from yours". As, then, it is 
not the circumstance that the conversation is 
concerning opinions, that makes us use the pre- 
position "with" ; is it that the pronoun is in 
the nominative case, seeing that we say; — "I 
"differ with you in opinion", but, — " My opinion 
" differs from yours "? No; that cannot be the 
reason ; for we say, not only ; — I differ with 
"you in opinion "; but also, — "I differ from 
" you in stature". Wherein, then, is the reason 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 151 

to be found ? It is, I think, in the varied mean- 
ing of the word "differ". That word has not 
the same meaning in the expression, — I differ 
with you in opinion'', as it has in the expres- 
sion,— "I differ from you in stature." In the 
former, it has an active, in the latter, a passive, 
signification. In the one, the thing to be ex- 
pressed is an act of the will ; and " I differ with 
"you on that point", is equivalent to, — "I 
" wrestle with you", " I contend with you", " I 
" dispute with you on that point, and you with 
"me". The dispute is mutual. But in the 
expression, "I differ from you in stature", the 
will is passive ; the statement is concerning a 
fact about which there cannot be any dispute, as 
it means merely, — " In stature I am different 
" from you." 

So, likewise, is it with the opposite of the word 
"differ", the word "agree", e.g.; — I agree 
" with you". It is a mutual agreement ; hence, 
the propriety of saying, " with you". But we do . 
not say; — "I agree with your proposition"; we 
say; — "I agree to your proposition"; there is 
nothing mutual between me and the proposition, 
therefore, I cannot say ; — " I agree with it" ; but 
must say ; — " I agree to it", i.e., " I assent to it." 



152 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

We cannot always trace the gradual process of 
unconscious reasoning which has been going on, 
in the mind of a people, in the formation of the 
idioms of their language; but it is always an 
interesting study. For example, we say; — "A 
"man parts with his wife"; we likewise say; — 
"A man parts from his wife." A man parts 
with his wife lovingly, regretfully, and looks 
hopefully forward to a reunion. A man parts 
from his wife angrily, and rushes off in a rage to 
the divorce court to obtain a judicial separation; 
and afterwards, whether the separation is con- 
firmed by law or not, we still speak of the hus- 
band and wife as having parted from each other. 
The feud between them resulting in such an act 
is considered to be so bitter that, although the 
parting is mutual, the language which we em- 
ploy respecting it, represents them not as agree- 
ing to part, but represents each as acting inde- 
pendently of the other. 

" H. S. D." is wrong in saying that in such 
expressions as, " I differ with the honourable 
"gentleman", we employ with "to denote the 
" relation of separation". We employ it to de- 
note the relation of union. It may be a union of 
antagonistic qualities, a meeting for combat; 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 153 

but still it is a union, a meeting for some pur- 
pose or other. " H. S. D." will probably acqui- 
esce in my opinion respecting the word " agree", 
as given above. But the same remarks that are 
applicable to that word, are applicable to its 
opposite, " disagree". I agree with one man, and 
I disagree with another ; " with " in each case 
implies union. In the one, it is a union of 
friendship, an embrace ; in the other, a union of 
antagonism, a death-grapple. 

By a figure of speech, we attribute life and 
volition to inanimate and to unconscious objects; 
and we say; — "His food disagrees with him " ; but 
it is because we figuratively attribute life and 
volition to the food and to the stomach, and 
think of them as quarrelling, that we use the 
preposition "with" in th&t sentence. If "H.S.D." 
objects to the expression "differ with", he must, 
in order to be consistent, object also to the ex- 
pression " disagree with ". But it would be per- 
fectly good English, though perhaps not exactly 
in good taste, to say; — "A certain cannibal dis~ 
" agreed with one of his wives, killed her, and ate 
"her; his troubles, however, did not end then, 
" for she disagreed with him after he had eaten 
" her, and he sickened and died." 



154 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

I have now to notice Mr. Gould's reply to my 
criticisms on his ' Good English \ He acknow- 
ledges himself wrong on some points, differs 
with me in opinion upon others, and apologizes 
generally for the errors in his book by saying 
that he "sometimes read the proof-sheets super- 
"ficially" Mr. Gould has much to learn in the 
school of letters if he thinks that the public will 
be satisfied with this explanation. Carelessness 
admits of no excuse. What is worth doing at 
all, is worth doing well ; and, if we are justified 
in looking for perfection in language in any book, 
it certainly is in one which has been written to 
expose the errors of other writers. Besides, Mr. 
Gould should bear in mind what he says on that 
point respecting Archbishop Trench and Dean 
Alford. See page 121. 

Mr. Gould pleads also that it is a first edition, 
which I have reviewed, and that 

"A first edition is never free from typographical and 
"other blunders." 

Probably not; but the purchasers of a first 
edition have a right to the best that the author 
could produce at the time, and they are naturally 
indignant when, having unwittingly purchased 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 155 

a book abounding with errors, they are coolly 
told by the author, that he " sometimes read the 
"proof-sheets superficially" As to the statement 
that the errors will be corrected in the second 
edition, what satisfaction is that to those persons 
who have purchased the first ? 

Moreover, Mr. Gould's plea, respecting " a first 
" edition ", sounds very strange to those who 
remember that he says, in his preface; — 

"Many of the following hints on philology have 
" already appeared in print in the form of ocea- 
" sional contributions, through a series of years, 
" to newspapers and periodical publications; [why 
" ' and periodical publications ' ? Is not a ' news- 
"' paper' a periodical publication?] — chiefly in 
"' The New York Evening Post 9 " 

The strictures on 'Webster s Orthography' like- 
wise, which form the second part of the work, 
are a reprint, with modifications, from ' The 
* Democratic Review ', whence, we are told, they 
were copied into several of the daily and weekly 
papers of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. 
The last part, a treatise on Clerical Elocution^ 
is likewise a reprint : it appeared in * The Boston 
1 Church Monthly' and in * The New York Chris- 
'tian News'. 



156 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

Mr. Gould's plea, therefore, that the errors are 
those of a "first edition", is not likely to have 
much weight in influencing any one's judgment 
in his favour. On the contrary, this defence is 
weak and impolitic. In it he endeavours to 
intrench himself in a position which is unten- 
able ; and thereby he courts attack under disad- 
vantageous circumstances, and exposes himself 
to censure for bad generalship. 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 157 



CEITICISM XVIII. 
EDWAED S. GOULD. 

In my last criticism I commented upon the 
apologies which Mr. Gould had put forth for 
certain acknowledged errors in his ' Good English'; 
which apologies are, that the work is in the first 
edition, and that he sometimes read the proof- 
sheets superficially. I have now to revert to 
certain disputed errors which he defends, and to 
notice the defence itself ; and I do this the less 
reluctantly because one error speciously defended 
is productive of more evil than would result 
from a dozen errors which might justly be attri- 
buted to inadvertence. 

I regret that anything in my criticisms should 
have given offence to Mr. Gould. I regret that 
he should have taken offence when no offence 
was intended. He who assumes the office of 
public critic, should himself be prepared to 
submit to the ordeal of public criticism through 



158 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

which he makes others pass. Mr. Gould, while 
praising in general terms the accuracy of my 
language in ' The Dean's English \ commented 
upon what he considered to be errors of mine 
in that book. For his correction, or for any 
other person's correction, of any real errors of 
mine, I am, and always shall be, sincerely 
thankful. I no more lay claim to infallibility 
than I do to omniscience. I endeavour to impart 
to others whatever knowledge I have acquired ; 
and I am always glad to receive instruction in 
return. The reviewers will find that I freely 
avail myself of their criticisms, in order to make 
each successive edition which I issue, more 
worthy of public esteem than was the previous 
one. 

In criticising Mr. Gould's work, then, I have 
but followed the example which he set me — he 
first criticised mine — and I am not conscious of 
having in any way spoken discourteously of him. 
His book might be made a valuable contribution 
to English philology, and one that would be read 
with advantage by all. But it is not perfect yet; 
and his defence of the errors which have been 
pointed out in it is, both in matter and in manner, 
anything but praiseworthy. Concerning my 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 159 

criticisms on his ' Good English', and his replies 
to those criticisms, he says ; — 

" My modest [!] belief is, that he [Mr. Moon] will 
" learn from my criticisms on his essays, more 
" than I have learned from his criticisms on my 
" book." 

It would he unbecoming in me to contend with 
Mr. Gould on this delicate point. Indeed, it is 
quite unnecessary for me to do so. I admit that 
I have learnt from his criticisms more than it is 
probable that he has learnt from mine. Let me 
enumerate my gains from this source : — I have 
learnt from Mr. Gould's example, that a writer 
on the proprieties of language may say, of a 
certain Latin quotation respecting matters of 
taste, that ; — 

" The proverb is something musty " / 

An expression quoted, indeed, from Shakspeare, 
but one that is not the less inelegant on that 
account. 

I have learnt also that it is not considered 
inelegant to say of a certain word; — 

" It smacks of attempted prettiness in style " ; 

and that we may even intensify the expression 
and say ;— 



160 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

" 'I-ther' and 'ni-ther' smack strongly" of peculi- 
arity, etc. 

I have learnt likewise that a corrector of the 
English of other writers may, himself, indulge in 
slang, and say ; — 

" If he attempts [this should be attempt] to imitate 
" the style of another, however good that style 
" may be in the original, he will certainly come to 
"grief" ! 

Moreover, I have learnt that there are very 
valuable privileges attaching to the office of public 
critic ; privileges, from the enjoyment of which, un- 
fortunately, my ignorance of their existence had 
previously debarred me. Thanks to Mr. Gould, 
I now see that it is quite admissible for a critic to 
palliate, in his own writings, the errors which he 
censures in the writings of an other. Mr. Gould's 
illustrations of this are most simple and appro- 
priate. The following is his condemnation of 
Dean Alford's misplacing of the adverb "only". 
I quote from ' Good English 9 , pp. 132, 133 : — 

" Queen's English \ paragraph 9. — " It is said also 
" only to occur three times ", etc. Bead, " occur 
" only three times ". 

Par. 44. — " this doubling only takes place in a syllable", 
etc. Eead, " takes place only in a svllahle ", 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 161 

Par. 142. — "which can only be decided when those 

"circumstances are known". Eead, "can be 

" decided only when ", etc. 
„ 166. — "I will only say that it produces ", etc. 

Eead, " I will say only thai it produces ". 
„ 170. — "It is said that this can only be filled in 

" thus ". Eead, " can be filled in only thus ". 
„ 210. — "It can only be used as expressing determi- 

" nation ". Eead, " can be used only as expressing 

" determination ". 
„ 221. — "This . . . only conveys the sense", etc. 

Eead, " conveys only the sense ". 
„ 233. — "I can only regard them as Scotticisms ". 

Eead, "regard them only as Scotticisms ". 
„ 289. — " and also when it is only true of them 

"taken together". Eead, "true of them only 

" when taken together". 
„ 368. — " I can only deal with the complaint in a 

" general way ". Eead, " deal with the complaint 

" only in a general way ". 



So also, on page 60 of ' Good English ', as 
previously remarked, Mr. Gould condemns the 
same error in a work by Archbishop Trench, from 
which he quotes as follows : — " It is undoubtedly 
" becoming different from what it has been, but 
"only different in that it is passing into another 
" stage of its development ". Mr. Gould adds, 
"this should be, 'different only'." But when a 

M 



162 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

similar error is pointed out in Mr. Gould's 'Good 
' English % (see Criticism xv,) Oh ! that is quite 
an other thing. It is clearly right to condemn 
the expression "only different", in a sentence of 
Archbishop Trench's ; but it is not at all right to 
condemn the expression " only takes ", in a sen- 
tence of Mr. Gould's, The simple reason for 
which is, that it is Mr. Gould's : — an admirable 
illustration of the old saying, — "Orthodoxy means 
" my doxy, heterodoxy means an other mans doxy" 
It really is very delightful to be a critic, and 
to be thus privileged in one's use of expressions ; 
and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Gould for 
opening my eyes to the riches of my inheritance ; 
and, in his compassion for my ignorance, kindly 
multiplying examples of the way in which my 
wealth may be advantageously employed. If I 
condemn an author for writing so ambiguously 
" as to leave the reader in doubt whether certain 
"words relate to what immediately precedes, or 
" to what follows them ", (see ' Good English ', p. 
110,) and am afterward caught in the commission 
of the same error, (see Criticism xvi,) and the 
public are challenged to come to any definite 
conclusion as to which of two meanings I in- 
tended to convey, I perceive that the proper 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 163 

course to adopt is, to act on the old showman's 
principle, and tell my critics to " take their 
" choice ". 

This is indeed politic ; and, in these days of 
plagiarism, when distinctions between meiim and 
tuum are often utterly ignored, we cannot value 
too highly the example which Mr. Gould sets us, 
in drawing, as he does, a very broad line between 
what is his own, and what is an other's. For 
example, in ' The Queens English \ the Dean of 
Canterbury uses the expression, "more decisive" ; 
Mr. Gould objects to it, and asks; — "Does the 
"Dean hold that ' decisive ' is an adjective that 
" admits of comparison ? " But when a similar 
question is put to Mr. Gould respecting his use 
of the expressions, " so universally " and " so 
" totally ", and he is reminded that a decision, in 
a court of law, for instance, may be confirmed 
by a higher tribunal, and thereby be made "more 
" decisive " ; but that " universality " and " to- 
"tality" cannot possibly be otherwise than 
perfect or complete; he very wisely abstains from 
entering upon any defence of the condemned 
expressions, and says, with amusing brevity, 
that he does not assent to his critic's objection. 

In a former criticism I stated that Mr. Gould 

at 2 



164 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

speaks of a word under the similitude of a 
counterfeit coin, and afterward of its being 
"purified" by an "endorsement". Mr. Gould, 
in refutation of the charge, says ; — 

" I beg leave to assure Mr. Moon that I do not speak 
" of a word * as a coin '. The word ' coin ' is not 
" in that part of my book. I speak of the making, 
" passing, and circulating of currency (which, if 
" I must again for Mr. Moon's benefit refer to a 
" dictionary, means ( paper passing for money ')." 

Mr. Gould seems to be determined to lay me 
under obligation to him. He not only searches 
out the word " currency " for me, in " a diction- 
" ary, (it is to be regretted that he did not give 
the title of the dictionary,) but he very consider- 
ately selects for me the one special meaning 
which he considers applicable. This is the more 
kind, inasmuch as I have been unable to find 
that particular, exclusive meaning in any of our 
principal modern dictionaries. I have searched 
Worcester, Webster, Eichardson, Ogilvie, Craig, 
and Chambers, but all in vain. I judge, there- 
fore, that so far from its being the meaning of 
"currency", it is only a secondary meaning of 
the word ; probably an Americanism. From 
Johnson and Walker, it is true, I learn that the 



Edward S. Gould. J BAD ENGLISH. 165 

word "currency" was formerly used for paper 
" passing for money in the colonies ". But unless 
Mr. Gould is prepared to show that this is its 
exclusive meaning ; i.e., that it does not mean coin 
likewise, he cannot justly censure me for saying 
that he spoke of coin when he used the word 
currency. " Currency " is a term which is appli- 
cable to anything which passes current as money. 
" Abraham weighed to Ephron four hundred 
" shekels of silver, current money with the 
"merchant " : Gen. xxiii, 16. When, therefore, 
I stated that Mr. Gould speaks of a word under 
the similitude of a coin, while, as he says, he 
really speaks of a word under the similitude of 
"paper passing for money", the cause of the 
error must, in justice, be attributed to him for his 
having used, in a conventional and restricted 
sense, the word "currency", which is a general 
term for "the aggregate of coin, notes, bills, etc., 
"in circulation in a country". If I have been 
misled as to Mr. Gould's meaning, it is his 
language which has misled me ; for he not only 
speaks of spurious currency, but of its being un- 
consciously accepted as genuine, and mixed up 
and paid out with "standard currency". Surely 
this language is more applicable to coin, than to 



166 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

paper, seeing that, according to the 'Encyclopedia 
' Britannica 9 , 8th edition, Vol xv, p. 430, "by the 
"standard of money is meant the degree of 
"purity or fineness of the metal of which coins 
" are made, and the quantity or weight of such 
" metal in them ". But Mr.Gould'suse oftheword 
" currency" is objectionable for an other reason: 
he uses the word as if it were synonymous with 
promissory note ; whereas, the word is descrip- 
tive not of a part, merely, but of the whole — "the 
" aggregate of coin, notes, bills, etc., in circula- 
" tion in a country ". A promissory note may be 
current, as legal tender; but it is not " currency"; 
and the calling it that, is a technical use of the 
word which a writer on the proprieties of language 
ought not to adopt. But granting, for the sake of 
argument, that "currency" means a promissory 
note, I have still to learn how a promissory note 
can be purified by an endorsement. 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 167 



CRITICISM XIX. 

EDWARD S. GOULD. 

The principal charge which Mr. Gould brings 
against c The Beans English' is, that in certain 
passages in it there are nouns which are followed 
by present participles, and yet are not in the 
possessive case. For instance, I say, on page 
42; — "I spoke of editors falling into mistakes". 
Again, page 56; — "We may properly speak of a 
"word being not strictly a neuter substantive, 
"but we cannot properly speak of a substantive 
" being strict ". Mr. Gould says ; — 

" The three italicized words should be in the posses- 
" sive case." 

I have well weighed Mr. Gould's opinion upon 
this matter; I have consulted the highest authori- 
ties upon it, and I am compelled still to differ with 
Mr. Gould. There are passages in ( The Bean's 
' English' which I had considered would be better 
with the noun in the possessive case; and, in 
the present English edition of the work, they 



168 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

stand so ; but in none of the instances quoted 
should Mr. Gould's alteration be made ; as I will 
prove to him by quotations from an authority to 
which he himself has appealed. 

I did not intend to reply to Mr. Gould's com- 
ments on this subject, because, fully to discuss it 
would occupy more space than could be devoted 
to it here. It fills fourteen closely printed large 
octavo pages in G. Brown's ' Grammar of English 
6 Grammars '. Still, lest, being silent, my silence 
should be misconstrued, and a wrong impression 
be produced as to the value which I set upon Mr. 
Gould's remarks concerning nouns which precede 
present participles, I will quote a few passages 
from the valuable work just mentioned (second 
edition) ; merely prefacing those passages by the 
statement that I entirely agree with the opinions 
which they express : — 

Page 503. — "Though the ordinary syntax of 
"the possessive case is sufficiently plain and 
" easy, there is, perhaps, among all the puzzling 
" and disputable points of grammar, nothing 
"more difficult of decision than are some 
" questions that occur respecting the right 
" management of this case." 

Page 642. — " The observations which have 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 169 

been made . . . show that possessives before 
' participles are seldom to be approved." 

Page 642. — " This brings us again to that 
1 difficult and apparently unresolvable problem, 
' whether participles as such, by virtue of their 
'mixed gerundive character, can, or cannot, 
' govern the possessive case ; a question, about 
' which, the more a man examines it, the more 
' he may doubt." 

Page 643. — "The following example, from 
' ' West's Letters ', is manifestly inconsistent with 
'itself; and, in my opinion, the three posses- 
1 sives are all wrong : ' The kitchen too now 
' ' begins to give dreadful note of preparation ; 
' ' not from armorers accomplishing the knights, 
1 ' but from the shopmaid's chopping force-meat, 
' ' the apprentice's cleaning knives, and the 
1 'journeyman's receiving a practical lesson in 
1 ' the art of waiting at table. 1 It should be : 
1 i not from armorers accomplishing the knights, 
' ' but from the shopmaid chopping force-meat, ■ 
' ' the apprentice cleaning knives, and the jour- 
' ' neyman receiving/ etc. The nouns are the 
'principal words, and the participles are ad- 
' juncts." 

Page 643. — " The leading word in sense ought 



170 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

" not to be made the adjunct in the construction; 
"and the participle, if it remain such, ought 
"rather to relate to its noun, as being the 
"adjunct, than to govern it in the possessive 
" case, as being the principal term." 

Page 643. — "'The daily instances of men's 
" ' dying around us.' Say rather, ' of men dying 
" ' around us , . ,, 

Page 644. — "If such relations between the 
"participle and the objective be disapproved, 
" the substitution of the possessive case is liable to 
"still stronger objections" 

There is nothing concerning which Mr. Gould 
manifests more ignorance, than concerning the 
rules which govern the possessive case of nouns ; 
and, as might have been expected, there is nothing 
concerning which he speaks more dogmatically. 
It does not seem to have occurred to him, that 
upon puzzling questions, which scholars have 
been unable satisfactorily to settle, it behoves 
us to speak with diffidence. 

Concerning " that difficult and apparently un- 
" resolvable problem, whether participles as 
" such, by virtue of their mixed gerundive 
" character, can, or cannot, govern the pos- 
sessive case ", Goold Brown, we see, says ; — 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 171 

it is " a question, about which, the more a man 
" examines it, the more he may doubt. " As this 
is the opinion of one who is well qualified to 
judge of the matter, we can have no hesitation 
in determining why it is that Mr. Gould has not 
any doubts respecting it. 

In replying to an inquiry put by H. S. D., I 
said ; — " We might as well speak of the breadth 
"of a mans sympathies' being as great as the 
" breadth of the Mississippi ; or of the depth of a 
"woman's affections' being as great as the depth 
" of the Atlantic ; as speak of a difference of 
" opinions' being comparable to the difference 
"between certain points of the compass." I 
believe that, in the manuscript which I sent from 
London, the three words, sympathies, affections, 
and opinions, in the foregoing sentence, were 
each in the possessive case ; but, by an error of 
the printer in New York, the sign of the pos- 
sessive case was omitted from the last of them ; 
and as I have no chance of even "superficially " 
reading the proof sheets of my criticisms in 
* The Round Table \ I am naturally exposed to 
censure for what is really not my fault : and 
several weeks must unavoidably elapse before I 
have an opportunity of freeing myself, as in this 



172 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

case, from a charge of inconsistency. However. 
I must say that I am not in very great fear that 
my character for accuracy and consistency will 
suffer much from that cause ; for, as respects my 
own criticisms generally, I can testify that they 
are printed in ' The Round Table ' with extra- 
ordinary fidelity to the original. 

Had I to rewrite the sentence which is at 
present under consideration, I should slightly 
alter the wording of it; (it is altered in this 
edition ;) for I agree with the author of ' The 
6 Grammar of English Grammars \ that it is gene- 
rally better to avoid using possessives before 
present participles. Still, I am glad that I did 
not avoid that construction in the instance to 
which I refer, as it has been the means of draw- 
ing forth Mr. Gould's opinion upon a subject 
which is deserving of notice. 

He says, in speaking of his own criticisms on 
the possessive case ; — 



" But while Mr. Moon tacitly admits the propriety of 
" my criticism, and evinces a disposition to follow 
" it, he shows that after all, he does not under- 
" stand it. He, indeed, uses the possessive 
"[sign] in sentences which require it; [why 
"make three consecutive clauses end with the 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 173 

" same little pronoun it ? ] but he applies it to the 
" wrong nouns." Mr. Gould goes on to say; — "The 
" reader, by referring to Mr. Moon's fourth 
" essay, will see that Mr. Moon speaks of the use 
" and abuse of comparisons ; and that, to illus- 
" trate his point, he selects the words breadth, 
" depth, and difference. Those words are his 
" terms of comparison, and therefore those words, 
"and not sympathies, affections, and opinions, 
" should be in the possessive case. Mr. Moon 
" will no doubt deny that ; but, observe, in the 
" sentence above quoted, Mr. Moon does not 
" bring * sympathies' and ' Mississippi' nor s affec- 
" ' tions ' and ' Atlantic ' into comparative oppo- 
sition; his words are 'the breadth of a man's 
" ' sympathies ' being as great as the breadth of 
"'the Mississippi; or the depth of a woman's 
" * affections ' being as great as the depth of the 
"< Atlantic', etc." 

Let us examine this statement. Mr. Gould 
says that, in the sentence which he has quoted, 
I have applied the possessive to the wrong nouns. 
He means that I have applied the sign of the 
possessive case to the wrong nouns. He says 
that "breadth", "depth", and "difference" are 
my terms of comparison, "and therefore those 
"words, and not 'sympathies', 'affections', and 
" 'opinions', should be in the possessive case" 

This reasoning is plausible, but its fallacy will 



174 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

be evident when I point ont that my terms of 
comparison are not "breadth", " depth", and 
" difference ' . These are abstract terms ; and 
my terms are not abstract, but specific. I do not 
speak of comparing "breadth", in the abstract, 
with "the breadth of the Mississippi; but "the 
"breadth of a man's sympathies", with "the 
" breadth of the Mississippi". Nor do I speak of 
comparing "depth", in the abstract, with "the 
"depth of the Atlantic"; but "the depth of a 
"woman's affections", with "the depth of the 
"Atlantic" ; and if Mr. Gould does not know, 
he ought to know before presuming to write 
upon the subject, that — "the possessive sign is 
" sometimes annexed to that part of a compound 
"name, which is, of itself, in the objective case; 
"as 'The Lord Mayor of London's authority'." 
If we were to apply Mr. Gould's reasoning to 
this expression, we should have to say that, as 
it is not London's authority, but the Lord Mayor's 
authority that is meant, London ought not to be 
in the possessive case ! But, of a similar sentence, 
' The Grammar of English Grammars ' says, on 
page 511, that the two nouns "cannot be ex- 
" plained separately as forming two cases, but 
" must be parsed together as one name governed 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 175 

" in the usual way". So, in my sentence, the 
nominatives to the participle " being ", are not, as 
Mr. Gould affirms, "breadth" and "depth"; but 
are "the-breadth-of-a-man's-sympathies" and " the- 
" depth-of-a-woman's-affections" ; and " any phrase 
" or sentence which is made the subject of a finite 
"verb, must be taken in the sense of one thing, 
"and be spoken of as a whole" ' : — ' Grammar of 
'English Grammars', page 573; and, of course, 
the sign of the possessive case must be, at the 
end, as Lindley Murray says; — "a phrase in 
" which the words are so connected and depen- 
dent, as to admit of no pause before the con- 
clusion, necessarily requires the genitive sign 
"at or near the end of the phrase". — -'English 
Grammar \ 8vo. edition, Vol. 1, page 263. 

Let it be noticed that the matter in dispute 
here, between Mr. Gould and me, is not the 
apparently unresolvable problem as to whether 
participles, as such, can or cannot govern the 
possessive case. Mr. Gould requires the nouns- 
preceding present participles to be in the pos- 
sessive case ; and in my sentence they are so. 
Nor is it a question between us, which word should 
have been in the possessive case, had my sentence 
\een differently constructed; for. Mr. Gould, 



176 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

himself, says of that very sentence ; — " the gram- 
" matical construction of a sentence depends on the 
"words that a man uses, and not on those that 
"he might have used" Mr. Gould's remarks, 
therefore, apply to my sentence, as it stands; 
and of it he says, that the sign of the possessive 
case is therein applied " to the wrong nouns " . 

On the highest authority, then, namely that 
of Goold Brown, and also on the authority of 
Lindley Murray, I deny the justice of Mr. E. S. 
Gould's strictures on my sentence ; and I affirm 
that the ignorance which they betray, of the 
commonest rules governing the possessive case, 
is such as would disgrace the merest tyro in 
composition. 

Mr. Gould has again adverted to my con- 
demnation of his too frequent use of the little 
word "so". He is evidently not at ease respect- 
ing it ; or he would, after what has been said 
on the subject, have let the matter rest. As, 
however, he has not done so, but has resorted to 
desperate means to improve his position, I cannot 
but conclude that he considered it to be critical. 

Now, of the many desperate means to which 
men in critical positions resort, none is more 
fraught with danger, than is dishonesty ; and 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 177 

though I should be sorry to make any condem- 
natory charge reflecting on Mr. Gould's character 
as a controvertist ; still, I must say that his 
conduct, in the matter under consideration, so 
much resembles literary dishonesty, that I hope 
he will, in justice to himself, give us a satis- 
factory explanation of the following singular 
circumstances. 

Eespecting certain remarks of mine on the 
word "so", he first makes a statement which is 
not in accordance with the facts of the case, 
and he endeavours to support that statement by 
a fictitious quotation of words nowhere to be found 
in my criticism; and then, feeling, I suppose, 
that he has done a very foolish thing, he is 
constrained to write again upon the subject, and 
correct his quotation of the passage ; but, as if 
his evil genius would not forsake him, he is 
tempted to omit from the middle of the dozen 
lines which he quotes, the very words which are 
opposed to his assertion, and which convict him 
of having unjustly charged me with incorrectness ! 

In speaking of Mr. Gould's expressions, (( so 
"totally", and "so universally '% I had said; — 
" To use language implying that anything can be 
" universal, and yet only partly universal ; or 

N 



178 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

"total, and yet only partly total, is to speak 
"nonsensically; yet such is the import of Mr. 
" Gould's expressions, ' so universally ', ' so 
"totally'." I might have added that Mr. 
Gould, not content with this murdering of the 
Queen's English, "out-Herods Herod" and says, 
' Good English', page 100 ; — 

" So absolutely universal " / 

Of all the outrageously extravagant examples 
of this kind of error that I ever met with, none 
equals this of Mr. Gould's. I wonder whether 
he will object to my condemnation of it. He 
said of my remarks on his similar expres- 
sions; — "Neither do I assent to his objection 
" to so universally and so totally ". As Mr. Gould 
is frequently asking me for my authorities, I 
will tell him what they say on this matter. 
I have not always brought forward my authori- 
ties ; because I gave Mr. Gould credit for 
being sufficiently well read in grammar to render 
that course unnecessary. 

Dr. Crombie says ; — " Universal is an ad- 
jective, whose signification cannot be height- 
ened or lessened; it therefore rejects all 
" intensive and diminutive words, as, so, more, 



jscfward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 179 

"less, least, most". — Treatise on Etymology and 
Syntax, page 359. 

Lindley Murray says ; — "Adjectives that have 
" in themselves a superlative signification, do 
" not properly admit of the superlative or com- 
parative form superadded. The phrases, so 
"perfect, so right, so extreme, so universal, etc., 
" are incorrect ". — ' English Grammar ', 8vo. 
edition, Vol. 1, page 250. 

Goold Brown says ; — " Comparative termi- 
nations, and adverbs of degree, should not be 
" applied to adjectives that are not susceptible 
" of comparison ; as, 'So universal a complaint \" 
— ' Grammar of English Grammars \ page 543. 

After condemning Mr. Gould's expressions, "so 
" universally y \ and "so totally' 7 , I said; — "The 
"little word 'so 9 is often misused in Mr. Gould's 
" ' Good English \ It occurs four times in four 
" consecutive lines on page 213". I then quoted 
the passage, and added, " This is the very opposite 
"of elegant". It must, therefore have been 
obvious to every reader, except "superficial" 
Mr. Gould, that my condemnation of the passage 
was for its want of elegance — its tautology. In- 
deed, there is strong presumptive evidence that 
this was obvious to him also, or he would not, in 

N 2 



180 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

endeavouring to support his previous statement, 
have omitted, from his quotation of my remark, 
the words, — "this is the very opposite of elegant" ; 
and have charged me with having said that he 
had " four times misused the word so ", — mis- 
used it by using it in a sense not consistent with 
its meaning ; see ' Round Table ', vol. 6, page 89. 
My words are not, — the misuse occurs four times 
in four consecutive lines; — but, "it [the little 
"word so] occurs four times in four consecutive 

"lines This is the very opposite of elegant". 

Had I said, " the misuse of the little word 'so' 
"is frequent in Mr. Gould's ' Good English 9 "; 
then the "it", might have applied to "the mis- 
"use"; but the words are not, — "the misuse is 
"frequent "; the words are, — "the little word 'so' 
" is frequently misused''; the "it", therefore, 
must apply to the word " so ". 

Mr. Gould's charge, then, falls to the ground ; 
or rather, it stands as an additional evidence of 
his superficial reading ; for I attribute to that, 
and not to any intentional dishonesty on his 
part, his strange omission of the most important 
words in that portion of the paragraph which he 
pretended to quote from my criticism. I advise 
him, as he values his literary reputation, to be 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 181 

more careful in future. The superficial reading 
of an opponent's remarks may be passed over ; 
even a false statement which is based upon that 
superficial reading may be pardoned ; but a 
subsequent deliberate supporting of that false 
statement, by a garbled quotation of an oppo- 
nent's words, is a course of action which is very 
likely to result in dishonour. 



182 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 



CEITICISM XX. 
EDWARD S. GOULD. 

To please Mr. Gould, who seems to be very 
anxious to prolong this controversy, I continue 
my criticisms on his language. I am delighted 
to serve him ; he is not a hard task-master, — 
one requiring me to " make bricks without straw ". 
He gives me plenty of the latter material ; and, 
knowing that it has been only "superficially" 
thrashed, expects • that I shall thrash it 
thoroughly. His expectations shall not be dis- 
appointed; nor shall any of his straw be wasted; 
for, what is not used in making bricks for a 
monument to be erected to his memory, shall be 
conscientiously made into chaff. In justification 
of my using such an expression as " chaff", I 
refer the reader to page 160. 

Mr. Gould flatters himself that the errors 
which I have exposed are all which are to be 
found in his work ; and that I close my criti- 
cisms because I am, as he elegantly says, 

" hard pushed " — " short of materials to work upon ". 

So far from that being the case, there are, 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 183 

even now, in my note-book, more than forty- 
errors of his upon which I have not yet com- 
mented. I have left them unnoticed merely on 
account of their being similar to those which I 
have previously criticised. The fact that Mr. 
Gould, in common with other writers, has com- 
mitted those errors, does not seem to me to be 
of sufficient importance to warrant my asking 
for space in ' The Round Table f to expose them. 
Errors abound in Mr. Gould's work. I had not 
intended to speak of any more, but his defiant 
mode of meeting criticism prevents my dealing 
with him as leniently as I otherwise would. I 
will take five consecutive pages, 20, 21, 22, 23, 
and 24 ; and, by exposing the errors in them, 
will show how forbearingly I have hitherto criti- 
cised his work, in that I altogether passed over 
those errors. On page 20, he says of the word 
donate ; — 

"Webster, of course, records the word; and lie 
" gravely gives its etymology ' from donare, . 
" ' donatum 9 , etc., — as if the prig [!] who fabri- 
" cated that bit [!] of literature ever saw a Latin 
" dictionary, or ever heard of the Latin lan- 
" guage ! " 

Are these suitable expressions to use when 

condemning the inelegancies of other writers ? 



184 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

On page 21, I read ; — 

" If Mr. Everett were about to deliver his oration on 
" Washington, at the Academy of Music." 

" On Washington, at the Academy of Music"! 
Mr. Gould should have said; — "deliver, at the 
"Academy of Music, his oration on Washington". 

Turn to the next page, 22 ; there we read ; — 

"That is, the addition of ess to those nouns which 
"indicate persons, in order to designate females". 

"Nouns which indicate persons, in order to 
" designate females " / Why did not Mr. Gould 
arrange his words somewhat in this manner ? — 
11 That is, the designating of women, by the 
" addition of ess to those nouns which indicate 
" persons generally. " 

On page 23, we are told of certain words 

" which have become as plenty as blackberries " ; 

instead of " as plentiful as blackberries. " Dr. 
Campbell, in his ' Philosophy of Rhetoric \ says, 
Vol. 1, page 417; — "Plenty for plentiful appears 
"to me so gross a vulgarism that I should not 
" have thought it worthy a place here, if I had 
" not sometimes found it in works of considerable 
" merit." Johnson says ; — "It is used barbarously 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 185 

"for ' plentiful \" Shakspeare uses the expres- 
sion, but it is generally condemned. 

On page 24, Mr. Gould, in speaking of the 
word "firstly ", says ; — 

"No lexicographer has yet ventured to accredit it." 

If Mr. Gould will refer to that dictionary of 
which, at page 167, he speaks thus : — " It is 
" simply justice to say, that Worcester's is the 
" only American dictionary which deserves to be 
"regarded as a standard of English orthogra- 
" phy ", he will find, not only that the word is 
accredited, but, that authorities are given for 
its use. 

I do not object to the occasional use of "first ", 
as an adverb ; but, in sentences where it would 
be followed by "secondly", " thirdly ", etc., the 
adverbial form is, I think, preferable. 

Of the phrase, " I differ ivith him in opinion ", 

Mr. Gould says ; — 

"Mr. Moon devotes to 'H. S. D.' no less than a 
" column and a half; and, as might be expected, 
" [Mr. Gould should have said ; — ' as might have 
"'been expected'. That of which he wrote was 
"past] he leaves the point as he found it; namely 
" an indefensible blunder, against which the taste, 
" the ear, and the common sense of every edu- 
" cated man revolt, as a matter of course." 



186 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

As a matter of course, Mr. Gould's acquaint- 
ance with educated men qualifies him thus to 
speak ; and equally " as a matter of course ", Dr. 
Worcester cannot be considered an educated 
man, seeing that he says, in his ' Dictionary of 
' the English Language ', page xi ; — " Differ with 
" a person in opinion ; from a person or thing 
" in some quality." 

The same excellent work condemns Mr. Gould's 
strictures on the word " graduated' '\ which, 
he says, on page 102, — 

"requires some part of the verb to be before it, 

"we might as well say 'he bom' as say 'he 
" ' graduated '." 

Was there ever such nonsense written by one 
professing to teach the proper use of the English 
language ? Worcester says ; — 

"Graduate, v. n. To take a degree; to become a 
"graduate; to receive a diploma. — 'He graduated 
"'at Oxford'." 

Thus I might proceed, and fill column after 
column of the ' The Round Table 9 with exposures 
of Mr. Gould's errors. He says ; — 

"The quotation would suffice if Mr. Moon's rule on 
" affirmative expressions is correct, but I deny 
" its correctness." 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 187 

A writer on the proprieties of language should 
know that the foregoing sentence is not correct. 
He should have said, either, — " The quotations 
" would suffice if Mr. Moon's rule were correct "; 
or, — " The quotations will suffice if Mr. Moon's 
" rule is correct." 

After finding such errors as these, we cannot 
wonder that Mr. Gould speaks of Dean Alford's 
"generally accurate style ". — ' Good English 9 , page 
115. "Birds of a feather", etc. 

Mr. Gould says ; — 

"I would like [he means 'I should like'] to ask 
"why Mr. Moon nses the adjective strange for 
"the adverb strangely in this sentence: — 'Mr. 
"' Gould's plea respecting a first edition sounds 
" ' very strange to those who remember '/ etc. 

It is evident from this remark that Mr. Gould 
would have said ; — " it sounds very strangely to 
"those who remember", etc. Strange incon- 
sistency! See what he says respecting the 
phrase, " the trees looked magnificently ". — ' Good 
'English', page 49. "Looked" has here a 
strictly neuter meaning, and therefore should 
be followed by an adjective; the phrase being, 
virtually, this : — the trees appeared, to the eye, 
magnificent. Now, I (not "would like", but) 



188 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

should like to know why " sounded, to the ear", 
must be followed by an adverb, while " appeared, 
"to the eye ", must be followed by an adjective. 
If this is a specimen of Mr. Gould's teaching, 
those who accept him as their guide must be 
strangely puzzled by the instruction which they 
receive. 

Mr. Gould seems to conclude that every ad- 
verse opinion of his which I do not controvert is 
accepted by me as being correct. I beg that on 
that point he will no longer deceive himself and 
his readers ; for, it does not follow that, because 
I do not reply to a certain counter-criticism, I 
therefore assent to it. Here is an example of 
what I mean : — Mr. Gould had said ; — * Good 
' English ', page 204. 

"This passage is more commonly read wrong", etc. 

I expressed surprise that he had not used, after 
the active verb "read", the adverb "wrongly". 
He replied, that " wrong " is both an adverb and 
an adjective; and, consequently, that his sentence 
is correct. I did not consider the matter worth 
any more words, and therefore left his remarks 
unanswered; but as he has written again to 
1 The Round Table ' and said ; — 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 189 

11 In due time I trust [he should have said, * I trust 
" * that in due time '] I shall hear Mr. Moon's re- 
joinder to my comments on that point". 

I give him my rejoinder thus : — I am aware 

that "wrong" is frequently used adverbially. I 

am aware also that G. Brown, in his ' Grammar 

of English Grammars ', pages 667, 670, says; — ■ 

'Adverbs that end in ly, are in general preferable 

'to those forms which, for want of this dis- 

' tinction, may seem like adjectives misapplied." 

■ Examples : — ' By the numbers being con- 
' ' founded, and the possessives wrong applied, 
' ' the passage is neither English nor grammar.' 
' 'Buchanan's Syntax ', page 123. Better thus : — ■ 
"wrongly applied', see page 980. Again, — ■ 
' ' The letter G is wrong named jee \ ' Creighton's 

■ 'Dictionary', page 8. Better thus :— 'wrongly 
''named', see page 980". As this is the 

opinion of one to whom, as to an authority, 
Mr. Gould has referred me, and very properly 
so, I trust that he will now be satisfied. 

With similar short-sightedness Mr. Gould 
says ;— 

" I find, moreover, that Mr. Moon frequently uses so 
"in the same manner that [this should be 'in 
"'the same manner in which 9 ; see Grammar of 



190 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

"'English Grammars 9 , page 303] lie tells me 
" that demonstrative young ladies use it. Here 
" is a sentence that contains a pair of them." 

What! a pair of "demonstrative young ladies"? 
Certainly ; there is no other plural noun, in Mr. 
Gould's sentence, that can be referred to by 
his plural pronoun " them ". 

Mr. Gould says ; — 

"I was [am, vide seq.] agreeably surprised to find 
" that the microscopic investigation of Mr. Moon 
" has, thus far, detected so few errors in ' Good 
" English 9 — I mean so few real errors " ! 

It is a pity to disturb Mr. Gould's complaisant 
satisfaction in his own work ; but I must remark 
that in the foregoing sentence there is one of 
the drollest errors which a writer could possibly 
commit. Mr. Gould says, in effect, that he is 
surprised to find that a microscopic investiga- 
tion of me has, thus far, detected so few errors 
in ' Good English ' / I really was not aware that 
I had been made the subject of microscopic in- 
vestigation ; and, even if I had, I should still be 
at a loss to comprehend how such an investiga- 
tion of me, could result in a detection of Mr. 
Gould's errors. Does he imagine that my 
perusal of his book has resulted in its errors 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 191 

being photographed on the retina of my eye, 
and that they are discoverable by means of the 
microscope? A " microscopic investigation of 
"Mr. Moon' 9 / What next? The foregoing 
nonsense is not the result of a printer's error, 
but is an example of what is one of Mr. Gould's 
usual modes of expression. I recommend him 
carefully to consider the difference that there is 
between the two following phrases : — " A portrait 
" of Mr. Gould, and " a portrait of Mr. Gould's". 
The former expression means a portrait of my 
worthy antagonist; the latter may mean a 
portrait of an old woman; and were I, in 
speaking of it, to follow Mr. Gould's example, 
and, dropping the possessive 's, call the portrait 
of the old woman ; — -" A portrait of Mr. Gould", 
I fancy that he would instantly awake to a con- 
sciousness of the absurdity of his own form of 
speech. 

Yet, one word more. Mr. Gould, writing to 
' The Bound Table ' respecting those errors in 
his book which he purposes correcting in future 
editions, says ; — 

" I send you a list of the corrections, which you may 
"publish if you think the game is worth the 
" candle M . 



192 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

I must pause to express my admiration of the 
beauty, the appositeness, and the classic elegance 
of this expression ; one suitable enough in collo- 
quial French — " Lejeu ne vautpas la chandelle" — 
but quite out of place in a philological discussion. 
Mr. Gould says, after enumerating his errors ; — 

" The foregoing list includes all the errors that I am 
"thus far aware of. Many things have been 
" specified by my critics which I do not admit to 
" be errors ; and many notices of my book have 
" been published which I have not seen ". 

Mr. Gould has, undoubtedly, seen the notices 
of his book which have been published in ' The 
' Round Table' ; for he quotes from them. How 
is it, then, that he altogether ignores the ex- 
posure of that which has been there described 
as the "climax" of his errors? Is it really to 
be left unaltered in future editions ? Speaking 
of the omission of the final 9 s at the end of 
proper names in the possessive case, Mr. Gould 
says, ' Good English \ page 79 ; — 

" Byron made short work of that, when he wrote,-— 

" ' And ere the faithless truce was broke 
« » "Which freed her from the unchristian yoke, 
" 'With him his gentle daughter came ; 
" k Nor there since Menelaus's dame 
Forsook,' etc. 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH, 193 

" In that case ", says Mr. Gould, " the printer may do 
" what he pleases with the final s, — use it or omit 
" it ; but the reader will take care to pronounce 
" it — if he knows how to read ". 

"If he knows how to pronounce ", says the 
learned critic in 'The Bound Table', "the reader 
"will take care to read the line in this manner : — 

" ' Nor there since Men-e-la-us' dame ' — " 

f in which we look in vain for Mr. Gould's pos- 
" sessive s y ". 

Happily, Mr. Gould's ignorance of Greek 
pronunciation is counterbalanced by the beauti- 
fully modest diffidence which he manifests in 
delivering his valuable opinion upon it. 

Eespecting "the list of corrections ", from which 
Mr. Gould has omitted the above-mentioned gem, 
he says, with amusing conceit, in a subsequent 
letter; — 

I regard my list of corrections, as a damaging reply 
a (in anticipation) to Mr. Moon's present essay." 

Little does Mr. Gould seem to know, that 
when a man thus speaks in his own praise, his 
doing so is accepted by all, as indisputable evi- 
dence that he considers it necessary ! 



194 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 



CEITICISM XXI. 
EDWARD S. GOULD. 

So " tautology " does not mean a repetition of the 
same word ? Certainly not ! Mr. Gould has 
affirmed it ; and how can we be in doubt con- 
cerning any matter upon which he has spoken 
authoritatively ? Do we not remember his 
learned disquisition on the proper pronunciation 
of the name of the Greek hero Men-e-ld-us ! 
Have we forgotten — can we ever forget — can we 
ever cease to fear — the threatened outpouring of 
that merciless scorn which Mr. Gould gives us to 
understand shall descend on our heads if we 
dare to pronounce that name otherwise than 
Men-e-laus ? His acquaintance with Greek is 
profound and I tremble while I venture to 
speak to him concerning the derivation of the 
word " tautology". 

He accuses me of ignorance : — I hang down 
my head, and blush as I acknowledge the justice 
of the accusation. He assumes the possession 
of superior learning : — I look up ; and, timidly 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 195 

approaching him, ask to be instructed. He says 
that 

1 Tautology " means " a repetition of the same meaning 
"in different words"; and that "a repetition of 
"the same word or words is another matter. 
"That is merely 'repetition', and is not at all 
"tautology. And to call it 'tautology', as Mr. 
" Moon does, is to betray ignorance of the mean- 
"ing of the word". 

Had I not the most unbounded confidence in 
the thoroughness of Mr. Gould's learning, I 
should imagine that he had accepted, with un- 
questioning faith, the erroneous opinion of some 
lexicographer in whom he has implicit confi- 
dence, and had not taken the trouble to analyze 
the word for himself. But as I know that he 
never does anything "superficially", I at once 
banish the idea, and trust that, in compassion 
for my "ignorance", he will condescend to let 
me know by what ingenious process of reasoning 
he arrived at the conclusion that TavroXoyia does 
not mean " the same words ". Eichardson — but 
who is Eichardson? Edward S. Gould is the 
great authority on matters relating to Greek — 
nevertheless, Eichardson says ; — 

" Tautology. Gr. ravroXoyia, the same words, or words 
" of the same signification. A repetition or re- 

02 



196 BAD ENGLISH.. [Edward S. Gould. 

"peated use of the same word or words of the 
" same or equivalent signification." See the quo- 
" tation from W arburton ; — ' A repetition of this 
" 'kind, made in different vjords, is called a pleo- 
" ' nasme : but when in the same words (as it is in 
" ' the text in question, if there be any repetition 
" * at all) it is then a tautology. 9 " 

See also what Goold Brown says : — 

" The repetition of the word degree, in saying, * The 
" superlative degree increases or lessens the 
" positive to the highest or lowest ' degree ', is a 
" disagreeable tautology. 19 — Grammar of English 
Grammars, page 279. 

Again : — 

" To say, ' The numbers must agree in number with 
" * substantives ', is tautological". — Page 316. 

Mr. Gould concludes by saying ; — 

"I hope that Mr. Moon will henceforth keep quiet 
" on ' tautology '." 

I do not doubt that the readers of ' The 
' Round Table 9 will, equally with myself, believe 
in the sincerity of this expression of hope from 
Mr. Gould. It must have been prompted by 
the most disinterested of motives. Possibly, 
he feared that I should bring upon myself the 
overwhelming derision of scholars. He has my 
zuarmest acknowledgments ; and, if I further 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 197 

rashly expose my "ignorance", I trust that, 
whatever opinion others may entertain of the 
act, he will believe that I am influenced only by 
a desire not to be outdone in disinterestedness, 
seeing that I am still willing to let my darkness 
be the foil that shall best set off the lustre of his 
thoughts. 

I do not consider tautology, — and hy" tautology " 
I mean a repetition of the same word or words, — 
to be always a blemish in composition ; on the 
contrary, I consider it to be often a beauty and a 
power, and that it frequently gives eloquence to 
the utterance, and force to the reasoning. In 
the following passage from my work, ' The Deans 
6 English ', page 110, I have, myself, used the 
word " language" eleven times in one sentence ; 
and yet I have not, I believe, used it once 
too often. The passage is on the neglect of the 
study of English, and is as follows : — 

"What a disgrace to us as Englishmen is 
"this ! — that our noble language, — the language ' 
"of our prayers to the Throne of Heaven; the 
"language of the dearest and holiest relation- 
" ships of life; the language of the maternal lips 
"which have blessed us and are now silent in the 
"grave; the language of our sorrows and our 



198 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

"joys, our aspirations and our regrets ; the 
"language in which we breathe our consolations 
" to the dying, and our farewells to those whom 
"we love; the language in which are embalmed 
"the stirring appeals of our patriots, and the 
"thrilling battle-cries of our warriors; the 
"language of our funeral dirges over those who 
"have fallen in defence of our homes, our 
"children, and our liberties; the language in 
"which have been sung our paeans of triumph 
" in hours of victories which have made England 
" great among the nations; that this language, 
" — the language of Shakspeare, of Milton, and 
"of the Bible, should be utterly ignored as a 
" study in our schools and our colleges! This 
" is indeed a disgrace ; a disgrace such as the 
" Greeks and Romans never incurred ; and one 
" upon which men in future ages of the world will 
" look back with wonder." 

Mr. Gould tells us that he is availing himself 
of the advice of his friends. I hope that none 
of them will be so indiscreet as to advise him to 
discontinue his letters to ' The Round Table \ 
They will certainly establish for him a reputation 
which will last as long as the English language 
is spoken. Go on, Mr. Gould, in the path which 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 199 

you have chosen ; rewards, far greater than any 
which you have yet received, await you in the 
future. But as there may be a wearying delay 
before we shall be able to congratulate you on 
the possession of those honours which you covet, 
you will not, I am sure, object to our whiling 
away a portion of the time by indulging in a 
little innocent mirth at your expense. 

" Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt ; 

* While every burst of laughter draws one out." 

A man who begins to build, and is not able to 
finish, has always been regarded as a proper 
object at which to point the finger of ridicule. 
Mr. Gould began to build a formidable battery, 
on which he purposed to mount one of the 
heaviest of his little guns, and then tempt me to 
storm the position, that he might — do, I know 
not what ! 

He said, as I have previously remarked ;— 

" I would like to ask why Mr. Moon uses the adjective 
" strange for the adverb strangely, in this 
" sentence : — ' Mr. Gould's plea respecting a "first 
•"" edition" sounds very strange to those who 
" ' remember,* etc. As Mr. Moon informs me 
" that ' carelessness admits of no excuse', I trust 
" that he will not plead ' carelessness ' in answer- 
" ing this second enquiry." 



200 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

Mr. Gould meant to say; — "will not, in 
"answering this second enquiry, plead 'care- 
" 'lessness'." Now, however, Mr. Gould feels 
obliged to acknowledge that my sentence is 
perfectly correct, and that his "question" (as he 
foolishly calls it, for it is merely the expression 
of a desire, and contains nothing interrogatory,) 
was a blunder, "a careless blunder". 

I do not like to contradict any man; but I 
must protest against Mr. Gould's calling this " a 
" careless blunder ". There was no carelessness 
in it ; it was a direct, deliberate charge of error 
preferred against me; and was, moreover, accom- 
panied by an expression of trust that J should 
not plead carelessness as an excuse, in my 
answering the charge. He believed that in my 
sentence, which he quoted, the adverb "strangely" 
ought to have been employed, and not the ad- 
jective "strange" ; this, even a child may see. 

Mr. Gould rather astonished me by saying, 
when he accounted for the errors found in his 
' Good English* , that he had "read the proof- 
" sheets superficially ". But for his own assertion, 
I should never have believed that he, as an 
author writing to expose the errors of others, 
had acted in so silly a manner. However, I gave 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 201 

him credit for the carelessness behind which he 
sought shelter. Again, when he thought that it 
would answer his purpose to condemn ' The 
6 Dean's English \ upon which he had previously 
lavished his praise, and he felt that some apology 
would be expected for a change in his views 
which he foresaw would be regarded with 
suspicion, superficial reading was again the plea 
which he put forth. This, too, astonished me ; 
but, once more I gave him credit for the careless- 
ness behind which he sought shelter. 

There is, however, a limit to every man's 
credulity, and now that Mr. Gould pleads care- 
lessness a third time, and as an excuse for a very 
different kind of error, I feel bound to tell him 
that I think he has used a wrong word. A man 
may plead carelessness as a reader, and careless- 
ness as a writer, and, consequently, be utterly 
unworthy of confidence as a professor of litera- 
ture; but when he pleads carelessness as an 
excuse, not for the form of his sentences, but, for 
his deliberate statements themselves, he employs 
a term, of which the most polite thing that can 
be said, even in parliamentary language, is, that 
it is not justified by the facts of the case. 

Like one groping his way in the dark, and 



202 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

feeling about for something by which he may 
guide his steps, Mr. Gould repeatedly asks for 
authorities. But, surely, that which exists as a 
rule in grammar merely in virtue of its having 
been laid down by some once-celebrated gramma- 
rian, is valueless. Far better than all such 
authorities are the dictates of common sense, 
and a knowledge of the usages of the best society. 
I condemned Mr. Goulds use of "would" for 
"should'' in the sentence, " I would like". He 
attempts a defence of his expression, by say- 
ing;— 

"I mean that, as a matter of choice, option, will, I 
" would like, and therefore my ' would ' is pure 
" English, Mr. Moon to the contrary, notwith- 
" standing". 

"Mr. Gould then says, that if "J would" is 
incorrect, he really does not see " how Mr. Moon 
" can escape the consequence of his criticism — 
" namely, that in the thirty-seventh verse of the 
"twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew, 'how 
" ' often would I', ought to be changed to ' how 
" ' often should I'" This is another instance of 
Mr. Gould's "superficial" reading. My objection 
was not to the words, "I would"; but to the 
words, "I ivould like". Mr. G. W. Eveleth, of 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 203 

Fort Fairfield, attempts a metaphysical defence 
of the expression, " I would like" ; and says; — " I 
" would like to discover either Dr. Cragin or Mr. 
" Moon at attempting to demonstrate the con- 
trary"; i.e., that the expression is wrong. I 
might reply to Mr. Eveleth, in the words of Butt- 
mann, as quoted by the late Sir Edmund W. 
Head, Bart., in his excellent little work, 'Shall 
' and Will ', page 7 : " Man frage nicht warum — 
" der Sprachgebrauch lasst sich nur beobachten". 
" The idiom of language admits only of being 
" observed ; let no man ask ' Why ?' " But the 
impropriety of the expression, " I ivould like", 
admits of demonstration. Mr. Gould informs 
us that he intended to express " choice, option, 
"will"; but, liking is not under the control of 
will. To do a thing, is certainly a matter of 
" choice, option, wilV } ; but to like to do it, is a 
matter which is not in the power of the will to 
determine. Hence, the absurdity of the ex- 
pression. 



204 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 



CEITICISM XXII. 
EDWAED S. GOULD. 

Mr. Gould tells us that he has re-read ' The 
6 Dean's English ' ; and he says ; — 

" That re-reading has enlightened me on one point. 
" I find that I, at first, read the book very super- 
" ficially". 

Superficialness appears to be a characteristic 
feature of Mr. Gould's reading. We have seen 
evidences of it in much that he has written ; and 
we have now a second confession of it from 
himself. However, consciousness of a bad habit 
in one's self, is, when expressed, a very hopeful 
sign of ultimate emancipation from its thraldom ; 
and therefore Mr. Gould must, on this point, 
have our congratulations. In the meantime, the 
frequent occurrence of evidences of his super- 
ficialness is not calculated to give us a very exalted 
idea of his qualifications for the office of public 
instructor. Besides, what dependence can be 
placed on the judgment of a man who at one 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 205 

time says, 'Good English', page 135; — u Mr. 
" Moons book is a masterpiece both in its extreme 
" accuracy of style, and in its criticism; and any 
" one, after reading it, can see how well deserved istlte 
" commendation it has received "; and at an other 
time says, that it is " a not very accurately written 
" booh "? The readers of these criticisms will, I 
think, be inclined to smile, not less at this change 
in Mr. Gould's opinion, than at his apology for it. 
In reference to this somewhat suspicious 
change, and by way of explaining it, Mr. Gould 
says, of ' The Dean's English ',— 

" It received the almost universal commendation of the 
" British press. The British journals and peri- 
" odicals not only spoke in high terms of Mr. 
" Moon's powers as a critic, but also of his style 
" as a writer of English. Indeed, I do not; 
" remember to have seen a single exception to 
" the style of * The Dean's English ' in any of the 
" British or American notices of the book; and I 
" the more incautiously allowed myself to praise 
" its style in my book, under the misleading of 
" such general approval by the critics — of whom, 
" among others, are ' The Westminster ' and 
" [London] * Quarterly Reviews V 

I am happy in the belief that the critics, both 
English and American, will not feel hurt by this 



206 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

charge of their having misled the public. They 
well understand that, from some men, censure is 
more complimentary than praise. Mr. Gould is, 
certainly, a very fit person to sit in judgment 
upon the critics ! He never examined any work 
"superficially" ; and, therefore, he never praised 
where he should have censured, nor did he ever 
censure where he should have praised. All that 
he has done, has been thorough; consequently, 
his opinion has at all times been decisive and 
indisputable ! 

But let us examine the composition of the 
passage which I have quoted. Mr. Gould says; — 
"The British journals and periodicals''. In 
reference to periodicals, Mr. Gould objects, in 
' Good English', page 82, to the application of 
the word "journal", to any other than a daily 
paper ; because, as he justly remarks, the deri- 
vation of the word limits the meaning to that. 
A "journal", then, is a publication issued daily ; 
and, of course, a "periodical" is a publication 
issued periodically. But " daily" is periodically ; 
therefore a "journal" is a "periodical" ; yet Mr. 
Gould says ; — " journals and periodicals" ! How 
are we to account for this ? How will he account 
for it ? Will he again plead " carelessness " ? 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 207 

To continue, Mr. Gould says ; — " The British 
"journals and periodicals not only spoke in high 
" terms of Mr. Moon's powers as a critic, but 
"also of his style as a writer of English ". A 
schoolboy could tell Mr. Gould that the relative 
parts of a sentence should agree with each other ; 
and that there must be something wrong in the 
construction when the words, "not only", are 
followed by a verb, while the corresponding 
words, " but also", are followed by a preposition : 
e.g., Mi. Gould says that the periodicals "not 
"only spoke", etc.," but also of". He cannot 
justify his adoption of this form of expression; 
nor can he plead ignorance as an excuse for the 
error; for I have repeatedly pointed it out to 
him ; and he, himself, has censured Dean Alford 
and others for committing it. Thus, I read in 
'Good English', page 100; — "Another blunder, 
" of which the instances are innumerable, is the 
" misplacing of the word ' only\ Indeed, this is 
" so common, so absolutely universal, [!] one may 
"almost say that 'only* cannot be found in its 
"proper place in any book within the whole 
"range of English literature . . . The error 
"consists in placing 'only 9 before the verb, 
"instead of after it; the grammatical effect of 



208 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

" which is, to make 'only' apply to the verb, 
" instead of [to] what follows the verb". On 
Mr. Gould's own showing, then, his sentence is 
incorrect. It ought to have been; — " The 
" British journals and other periodicals spoke in 
" high terms, not only of Mr. Moon's powers as a 
" critic, but also of his style as a writer of 
" English ". Superficialness and carelessness 
again, I suppose ? 

There are other errors in this paragraph re- 
specting ' The Dean's English 9 . Mr. Gould says; — 
" and I the more incautiously allowed myself to 
" praise its style in my book, under the mislead- 
" ing of such general approval by the critics — of 
" whom, among others, are ' The Westminster' 
" and 'Quarterly Reviews'. I did not know 
that "critics "are "Reviews") I thought them 
to be reviewers. Again; "the critics — of whom, 
"among others, are", etc. Mr. Gould expressed 
a hope that I would " keep quiet on tautology" ;— 
the reason is obvious. 

After testifying to the favourable opinion 
entertained of ' The Dean's English', Mr. Gould 
says, in the next sentence ; — 

" " If however, the style of the book in question is 
" nevertheless ", etc. 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 209 

" If however, nevertheless " / I wonder whether 
this comes up to Mr. Gould's idea of tautology ; 
and whether, if it does, he will again plead 
"carelessness", as his excuse for it. He seems 
to consider that to be a sufficient apology for any 
error ; but, yet, still, however, nevertheless, notwith- 
standing, he ought to know that " carelessness " 
is scarcely less injurious to a man's character as a 
professor of literature, than is absolute ignorance 
itself. 

As an additional evidence of Mr. Gould's 
"carelessness" and "very superficial" reading I 
bring forward his assertion that, of a certain 
kind of error, — 

" Mr. Moon can find but seven [instances] in Dean 
" Alford's book " — " in the Dean's whole book ". 

Yet Mr. Gould must have read, on page xii of 
my preface to the edition of ' The Dean's English 1 
from which he quotes, that, — " I did not extend 
"my criticisms to his [The Dean's] recently pub- 
" lished volume, 'The Queen's English'" My 
criticisms are on the Dean's essays in ' Good 
'Words'. So much for Mr. Gould's "careful' 
examination of ' The Deans English 9 . 

The following are some of the errors which he 

p 



210 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

professes to have discovered in the course of his 
"careful" examination of it. 
He condemns the expression : — 

" Those whom you think to be most in need of im- 
"provement". And he says; — "In common 
"parlance, and in careless writing, 'those' is used 
" as the equivalent of ' those persons \ etc. But 
"in the sentences of a philological critic who 
"holds a brother critic responsible for every 
" faulty particle in his sentences, ' those ' by itself 
" is inadmissible." 



" A little learning is a dangerous thing ". The 
word "those", by itself, is, unquestionably, inad- 
missible in certain sentences ; but not in sentences 
in which it is folloived by a relative pronoun ; as 
it is in the sentence which Mr. Gould condemns. 
If he will refer to ' Lindley Murray 9 s Grammar 1 , 
Eule xxi, section 10, he may read thus : — " The 
1 examples which follow are produced to show 
' the impropriety of ellipsis in some particular 
'cases: — * The land was always possessed, 
' ' during pleasure, by those intrusted with the 
e ' command ' ; it should be, ' those persons in- 
trusted ' ; or ' those who were intrusted ' ". 

Again ; Mr. Gould condemns the expression 
"to understand ", in the following sentence : — 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 211 

" You will take into consideration the extreme diffi- 
" culty we have to understand the contradictory 
" instructions we have received." 

He suggests that it would have been better to 
say ; — " Our extreme difficulty in understanding" ; 
but he very cautiously adds, " if that is what is 
"meant". Now, that is not what was meant; 
and it was for that very reason that I used the 
other expression. The difficulty spoken of, was 
not one that occurred in the process of under- 
standing the contradictory instructions received. 
The difficulty occurred at the outset, before the 
mind had been able, in any degree, to grasp 
the meaning of the writer's words. Hence, 
the propriety of speaking of our difficulty " to 
" understand " the contradictory instructions. 
Mr. Gould's language would imply that the mind 
had made some progress in the task before the diffi- 
culty occurred; — that it was " in understanding " 
the contradictory instructions. But my meaning 
was, what my language plainly expresses, namely, 
that the mind had made no progress whatever, in 
the task, before the difficulty occurred ; — the con- 
tradictory instructions were still before it as a 
task which it had " to understand" . 

Mr. Gould objects to my saying that, — 

p 2 



212 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

" The faults of teachers, if suffered to pass unre- 
" proved, soon become the teachers of faults." 

He says ; — " This is neatly antithetical, but it 
" is incorrect in fact. Faults may become ex- 
" amples, but they cannot well be teachers, " 
Indeed ! Why not ? Teaching does not neces- 
sarily imply the possession of volition on the 
part of the teacher. Not only Jesus Christ, (I 
say it with all reverence,) but nature also, is "a 
" teacher sent from God ". — " Ask now the beasts, 
"and they shall teach thee; .... or speak to 
" the earth, and it shall teach thee " : Job xii, 
7—9. 

As for the language of the Bible, Mr. Gould 
condemns me because, in making a quotation 
from it, I adhered to the old spelling, and wrote 
the verse ' verbatim et literatim ', and spelt 
"forbade " without the e ! A most grave charge, 
certainly; at least, such Mr. Gould tries 
to make it appear; for he does not tell his 
readers, as in honesty he ought to do, that my 
spelling of the word was in a literal quotation of 
the well known passage in 2 Peter, ii, 16: — 
" The dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad 
" the madness of the prophet." But, perhaps 
Mr. Gould did not know that the quotation is from 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 213 

the Bible. If so; all that I can say is;— " the 
" greater the disgrace ! " 

Mr. Gould finds fault likewise with the ex- 
pressions : — 

"It will be only modest of the Dean"; and, " If you 
will not think it sacrilegious of me ". 

He says ; — " Might not Mr. Moon as well say 
" ( off the Dean'; and, ' off me'? The proper 
"word is in". Again, Mr. Gould, in a vain 
endeavour to find an error in the language of 
an other writer, really exposes his own ignorance. 
He is, evidently, not aware that the expressions 
are elliptical ; and that it is as correct to say ; — 
" It will be only modest [on the part] of the 
" Dean" ; as it is to say ; — "It will be only modest 
"in [the conduct of] the Dean". 

The next objection which Mr. Gould raises, is 
to my saying — stop ; I find that the words which 
careful Mr. Gould puts into inverted commas as 
a quotation, are nowhere to be found in my book! . 
His objection, however, is to my calling the word 
"female " an " epithet ". He says ; — 

" Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Moon seems to be ignorant 
" of the meaning of English words. He calls 
"the noun, 'female', an 'epithet'. If he would 
"take the trouble to consult [the reader will 



214 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

"observe that, according to Mr. Go aid, it is 
" wrong for me to say, ' the difficulty to under- 
" ' stand '; but right for him to say, " the trouble 
"'to consult "] his dictionary, he would find that 
"an epithet 'is an adjective expressing some 
" ' quality that is appropriate to a person or 
" 'thing '; as good, bad, etc. Is ,it possible that 
" Mr. Moon is ignorant of the fact that no part 
" of speech other than an adjective is an epithet"? 

I reply that it is not only "possible", but 
actual; for, what Mr. Gould calls a "fact ", has 
really no foundation in truth. I have taken the 
" trouble to consult " the very dictionary which 
he commends most highly, and which, on that 
account, I suppose to be the one which he him- 
self consulted, — superficially, of course, as is 
consistent with his practice in such matters. In 
that dictionary I read as follows : — " ' All adjec- 
' ' tives ', says Crabb, ' are epithets ; but all 
(i epithets are not adjectives. Thus, in Virgil's 
' ' Pater Mneas (Father iEneas) the Pater 
' ' (Father) is an epithet, but it is not an adjec- 
1 ' tive '." Thus, the very authority to which 
Mr. Gould refers me condemns him ! 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 215 



CEITICISM XXIII. 
EDWARD S. GOULD. 

Mr. Gould objects to my sentence : — 

" Let your meaning be obscure, and no grace of diction 
"nor any music of a well-turned period, will 
"make amends to your readers for their being 
"liable to misunderstand you." 

He would say; — "Neither grace of diction, nor 
"any music ", etc.; from which correction (?) I 
can draw no other inference than that he believes 
it to be wrong to use the negative particle "nor", 
except as the co-relative of "neither". Again 
I refer him to an authority to which he has 
appealed, — Q. Brown's ' Grammar of English 
' Grammars \ On page 664, 1 read : — " Undoubt- 
edly a negative may be repeated in English 
"without impropriety, and that in several differ- 
" ent ways; as, ' There is no living, none, if 
" ' Bertram be away \ — Shakespeare. ' Great 
" 'men are not always wise, neither do the aged 
" ' [always] understand judgment ': — Job xxxii, 9. 
" ' Will he esteem thy riches ? no, not gold, nor all 
" ' the forces of strength ' : — Job xxxiv, 19." 



216 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

Likewise to the following sentence of mine, 
Mr. Gould objects : — 

"This is enough to show that the schoolmaster is 
" needed by other people besides the directors." 

Mr. Gould would alter this to, " other than ". 

But, here again, it is he who is in error ; and he 

is condemned on this point also, by the authority 

just quoted. In a foot note on page 678 of ' The 

Grammar of English Grammars ', I read ; — 

' After 'else' and 'other', the preposition 'besides' 

'is sometimes used; and when it recalls an idea 

' previously suggested, it appears to be as good 

' as ' than ', or better ; as, ' other words, besides 

' ' the preceding, may begin with capitals V' The 

phrase, "other ... than", is exclusive of those 

mentioned; whereas, " other ...besides", is m- 

clusive of those mentioned. No slight difference; 

and yet, one that has escaped the observation of 

Mr. Gould. 

Another sentence to which he objects is the 
following : — 

" I wished to show, by your own writings, that so far 
" were you from being competent to teach others 
" English composition, that yon had need your- 
" self to study its first principles." 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 217 

Mr. Gould's objection is to the repetition of 
the word " that ", not on account of its being 
somewhat inelegant ; but, on account of its being 
positively incorrect ; indeed so very incorrect, 
that he questions whether anything could be 
worse. I had previously considered that the 
sentence would be improved by the omission of one 
of the "thats", and in the English edition of ' The 
Deans English' it had been altered accordingly. 
But, that the sentence, as it stands in the early 
edition from which all Mr. Gould's quotations are 
made, is not incorrect, admits of very simple 
demonstration. 

It will, at once, be conceded that it is correct 
to make a statement thus: — "So far were you 
"from being competent to teach others English 
"composition, that you had need yourself to 
"study its first principles"; and no one but 
Mr. Gould would say that it is incorrect to 
preface that statement by these words; — "I 
" wished to show, by your own writings, that ". 

Yet Mr. Gould says; — "Could anj^thing be 
"worse than 'thaW* Yes, Mr. Gould; many 
sentences of your own are decidedly worse; 
sentences, too, in which the error consists of the 
misuse, or of the omission, of the identical word 



218 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

under discussion. On page 60, of Mr. Gould's 
work, I read: — "Many writers have a habit of 
"omitting 'that', from what would seem to be 
"a propensity to over-neatness of style; or, it 
"may be omitted through carelessness. The 
" omission makes a sentence both inaccurate 
"and inelegant." 

Was it "a propensity to over-neatness of style" 
which induced Mr. Gould, four times in one 
letter to ' The Round Table ', to omit the word 
" that", where its presence was needed ; or is the 
omission but another evidence of his " careless- 
" ness "? 

Compare his remarks on this subject with his 
practice in the following sentences : — 

" I hope [that] he is not so far lost ". 

"Mr. Moon says [that] k a deal of argument is 

" ' wrong'." 
" I think [that] Mr. Moon ought to know ". 
"Mr. Moon says [that] my errors are so droll". 

Mr. Gould objects to my speaking of 

" the childish prattle of our little ones "; 

and he says; — "Mr. Moon! could you not say, 
"'the prattle of children '?" Certainly, Mr. 
Gould, I could ; but I greatly prefer the tender- 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 219 

ness of the former expression, to the comparative 
unlovingness of the latter. 

Mr. Gould, knowing that I censured Dean 
Alford for confusedly mixing the tenses of verbs, 
exults in what he believes to be the discovery of 
a confusion of tenses in a paragraph of mine. 
He says ; — " Mr. Moon knows that Dean Alford 
" occasionally mixes the past and present tenses; 
" and that the mixture is a fault. Yet Mr. Moon 
"gives us, on page 106, this: — [Perhaps Mr. 
Gould will pardon me if I add to his quotation 
certain words which he chose to omit.] 

" It was not until I had long and hopelessly pondered 
" over your sentence, that I discovered what it 
"ivas you intended to say, and what was the 
" reason of my not instantly catching your niean- 
"ing. I find that the first clause in your 
" sentence is inverted, and that the punctuation 
*' necessary to make the inversion is incorrect, or 
" rather is altogether omitted". 

Here, again, it is Mr. Gould who is in error. 
The two sentences are perfectly distinct, and 
each is correct. The first relates to the past — to 
what I "discovert", to what was "intended". The 
other sentence relates to the present — to what " I 
find", namely, that the clause "is inverted", 
and that the punctuation is incorrect ", etc. My 



220 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

condemnation of the Dean, was for his confusion 
of tenses in a sentence; not for his change of 
tense in a paragraph. 

I really feel that I ought to apologize to my 
readers for noticing some of Mr. Gould's remarks. 
They are simply puerile, and do not deserve so 
much as a passing notice, except for the purpose 
of showing how unwisely even an educated man 
may be tempted to write, when for a time his 
mind is bent upon detracting from the merit of 
an opponent. 

Further ; Mr. Gould says ; — " On page 94, he 
" [Mr. Moon] assumes to amend one of the 
"Dean's sentences, and says that his amend- 
" ment ; is correct \ The amendment is in these 
"words: — 

" * If with yonr inferiors, speak not more coarsely 
* ' than usual '. 

" The Dean's sentence is, ' Speak no coarser 
"'than usual": and it was very well for Mr. 
"Moon to object to one adjective and to put an 
" adverb in its place ; but it seems strange, that 
"while his attention was directed to adverbs and 
" adjectives, he could overlook another adjective 
"in the same line which requires the same 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 221 

" change ! Usual is an adjective, not an adverb. 
" And when Mr. Moon, by way of correcting the 
" Dean's line, changes coarser and leaves usual 
"unchanged, he commits the same blunder as 
" [that which] he has just condemned in theDean. 
"And he intrenches himself in his own blunder 
"by the affirmation that the line, as amended, 
" ' is correct \ Whether it is correct or not, is 
" shown by supplying the omitted words of the 
" ellipsis :— ' Speak not more coarsely than [you] 
"< usual [do]'!" 

That is all very good in its way, Mr. Gould ; 
but when we find an ellipsis in a writer's sentence, 
it behoves us not to be dogmatical as to what 
words he has omitted; nor ought we to accuse 
him of inaccuracy because his sentence, according 
to our filling up of it, is ungrammatical ; when 
there is an other way of filling it up; and when, 
according to that filling up of it,- the language will 
be found to be correct. It is not improbable that 
the Dean meant : — ei Speak not more coarsely than 
" [is] usual"; or, " Speak not more coarsely than 
" [it is] usual [for you to speak.] " It was there- 
fore only just toward him, to leave unaltered the last 
word of his sentence. 

However, if Mr. Gould is particularly anxious 



222 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

to find a sentence in which a verb is qualified by 
both an adverb and an adjective, he need not go 
very far for it. On page 125, of his own work, 
there is the following sentence : — 

" * As closely as possible' means as closely as possible, 
" and no closer ". 

The words refer to the rule that the parts of a 
sentence which are "connected in meaning should 
" be connected in position as closely as possible ". 
Therefore, Mr. Gould's expression is really this : — 
" [Connected] 'as closely as possible' means, [con- 
nected] as closely as possible, and [connected] 
"no closer'" I Look at home, Mr. Gould ! Look 
at home ! 

When Mr. Gould meets with what to him is a 
difficulty, instead of acknowledging in humility 
that at present he is not equal to its solution, he 
has a method of his own of dealing with it, 
which is deserving of attention here. It is 
evident that, confidently as he speaks concern- 
ing the necessity for our putting nouns into 
the possessive case when they are followed by 
present participles, he has some misgivings 
respecting the universal application of the rule ; 
otherwise, it seems improbable that he would 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 223 

resort to the practice of misquoting an opponent's 
words, lest, in their natural order, they should 
prove to be irreconcilable with a certain favourite 
theory. 

Mr. Gould gives what he calls "a complete 
" list " of the instances in which, in ' The Dean's 
6 English ', I have used a noun before a present 
participle, without putting the noun into the 
possessive case. I have spoken of this matter 
in Criticism XIX ; and I revert to it, merely to 
notice Mr. Gould's additional remarks. It will 
rather surprise my readers to be told that, not- 
withstanding Mr. Gould's assertion, he has not 
really given us "a complete list' 1 of the instances 
mentioned. 

Mr. Gould may again plead "carelessness" ; 
or, he may tell us that his second reading of ' The 
6 Dean's English' was, like the first, "very sape7<- 
"ficial" ; but it is rather suspicious, that what 
he has omitted from his "complete list", happens 
to be a part of one of those difficult sentences 
which it is more than probable he was at a loss 
how to treat according to the rule laid down 
by him. 

Why, from his "complete list," did he leave 
out part of the sentence which he pretended 



224 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward S. Gould. 

to quote from page 93 ? His quotation is 
as follows : — " Owing to the term being capable ". 
But my sentence is : — 

u Owing to the term ' no more ' being capaMe of mean- 
"ing", etc. 

I suppose that he would not like to write, 
either ;— " Owing to the term's 6 no more' being 
capable of meaning", etc.; or, "Owing to the 
term 'no moreV being capable of meaning", 
etc.; and therefore — but it was merely " careless- 
u ness ", of course — he gave in his " complete list", 
a garbled quotation of the sentence ! 

Mr. Gould appears to be not only an admirer 
of Dean Alford, but also an imitator of him; 
and, as is usual with persons who are not re- 
markable for originality, he imitates that which, 
in his model, is least worthy of imitation. The 
Dean is fond of a joke ; and, of course, Mr. 
Gould, also, must for once try to be witty ; so 
he writes thus; first pretending to quote from 
page vii of ' The Dean's English ' ; — 

* ' The Dean has altered and struck ont not fewer 
"'than eight-and-twenty passages which I had 
" * condemned as faulty.' " 



Edward S, Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 225 

Mr. Gould says ; — " That is as thoroughly 
" Irish as anything in ' The Queens English '. If 
"the passages were struck out how could they be 
" altered — since striking them out made an end 
"of them? To be sure, they might have been 
" altered and afterward stricken out [struck out;] * 
"but, in that case, how could Mr. Moon know 
" anything of the alteration ? I would advise 
" him to alter or strike out his own sentence. The 
"real state of the case is shown on pages 126 — 
"139: twenty passages are 'altered 1 and eight 
" are ' struck out V 

No doubt, Mr. Gould wished the readers of 
6 The Round Table ' to consider his criticism as 
very witty. They will, however, probably give it 
another name when they know that the joke is at 
the sacrifice of truth ! I do not say ; — " The 
" Dean has altered and struck out not fewer than 
" eight-and-twenty passages ". My words are ; — 
" The Dean has altered and struck out, altogether 
" not fewer than eight-and-twenty passages ". 

Why did Mr. Gould omit, from his quotation 

* <; When the verb has different forms, that form should be 
adopted which is the most consistent with present and reputable 
usage in the style employed". We ought not to say; — 'The 
1 clock hath stricken ' ". — ' Grammar of English Grammars'^. 577. 

Q 



226 BAD ENGLISH. [Edward. S. Gould. 

of my sentence, the one word which proves the 
falseness of his statement? 

Why, too, did he speak of me as one "who, 
" ■ with no uncertain sound ', assumes infallibility 
"for his own English" ; when he was well aware 
that, in Criticism XVIII, I had said; — "I no 
" more lay claim to infallibility than I do to omni- 
" science "? 

Moreover, Mr. Gould knew that, in a note 
courteously censuring him for his discourteous 
language, the editor of ' The Bound Table ' had 
closed the controversy between us, at least as 
regards the insertion of any more of it in the 
columns of ' The Round Table \ and that it was 
only as a special favour that Mr. Gould's request 
for the insertion of an other letter from him was 
granted. He ought, therefore, like an honour- 
able man, to have shrunk with especial care from 
making any statement which bore the semblance 
of an untruth, seeing that I was debarred the 
privilege of replying to it. 

Honest criticism I value most highly. A 
witty remark, or a smart repartee, I can always 
appreciate. But when a writer has recourse to the 
meanest of all questionable practices in order to 
give zest to his criticisms and point to his other- 



Edward S. Gould.] BAD ENGLISH. 227 

wise feeble wit, I tell him plainly, that his 
criticisms and his witticisms alike are deserving 
of contempt. 

Shall I part thus with my opponent ? No ! 
rather let me, in very charity towards him, do 
violence even to my own judgment in the matter, 
and ascribe his misstatements, as well as his 
errors, to "carelessness" and "very superficial" 
reading ; and tell him that, notwithstanding all, 
I have derived much amusement from his 
writings, as well as some instruction. 



THE END. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

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